5 ms·

Now Hiring If You're Young (1998)

34 points by gourneau 17y ago

danbmil99 17y ago
I suspect the main reason MS or Google or anyone else prefers young programmers is that they tend to be more committed and 'fresh', in the sense that they are not yet bitter, cynical, and hopelessly opinionated. They also tend not to have as heavy a set of personal/family obligations, so can work cheaper, longer hours etc. And of course on average, if you're too lazy to actually find out from the interviewee, they probably tend to have more up-to-date skills. OTOH, a seasoned veteran often has a knowledgebase in a specific problem domain that can be immensely valuable. However, it takes a lot of work to find the right person and ensure that his KB is the real thing, is up to date, and that the personality attached to the KB is going to mesh with the culture of the rest of the team. When things are going gangbusters, it's easier to just ignore these subtleties and hire the lusty, naive young waifs who will work their skinny little asses to the bone for da man before they realize their souls are being sucked dry by evil sorcerers.
tjic 17y ago
> 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years -- when most are still only in their early 40's -- it is down to 19 percent. That data is compatible with lots of things besides age discrimination: * a job description that mostly appeals to the young * a young and rapidly growing field where most of the 1988 CS grads are promoted to management, so that they can manage the 10x larger 1998 CS grads * etc.
- patio11 17y ago
  And a nation in which the average individual changes careers 3 time, for that matter.
ironkeith 17y ago
NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".
- jrbedard 17y ago
  The article is from 1998, Java was 3 years old.
  - phatboyslim 17y ago
    Does that also mean the statistics provided by the author are meaningless since they are 10 years old and closely tied to the dot-com boom?
    - akeefer 17y ago
      Since they're backward looking statistics they actually track what happened before the dot com boom. They still might not be relevant given the current marketplace, of course.
  - ironkeith 17y ago
    I appear to have made a date mistake. sigh
paulbaumgart 17y ago
"Employers justify shunting aside midcareer programmers on the ground that they lack skills in the latest software languages." I don't see what's wrong with that. Clearly, to command a higher salary, an employee has to offer more than someone who gets paid less. And if in fact that employee has less to offer than a more junior person, because their skills are obsolete, it's even more of a reason to let them go. I guess it's not a very comfortable position to be in- having to always prove your worth to an employer- but I think it's unavoidable, especially in an industry that changes quickly.
- drawkbox 17y ago
  True but on the flipside just because someone is young doesn't mean they will provide more value. One thing that is interesting about this article is that it was written just as the internet/web boom was happening. It is important to note that a whole slew of industries and job tracks have been created since then. It is also very important to note that software development really wasn't a field until the 70's. So what we have is a young industry, thus younger people in it. The age of someone that started development young in the early days of the web (mid-90s), let's say 1995, would be approx 32-33. Anyone older than that had to come into web from pre-web industries, thus lacking in ability to change and learn to someone coming in clean. But nowadays an industry really was born around the late 1990s that will get older and more skilled, as well as seeing young come in, at least in terms of web based development, game development and other recent web industries. It would be like when radio started where people getting into it were young, as time went on it wasn't about age but skill and value. Same will happen with software or web development. Young will always be a key factor in software and web development but the position of the industry in time gives it a skew that appears ageism is more rampant. This article was even more lodged into a time where hardly anyone knew the web would change the world and grow fields and industry as much as it did. At this point the people that were going to go into marketing, radio, tv are now all going to the web. So really, I agree it will be up to providing value and innovating but we will see the industry, especially the web industry, mature to where it isn't just the young running it. I would say a prime is after someone went to school, and programmed for at least 8-10 years. This is when programmers start becoming efficient and product developers. The earliest that could happen for most people is late 20's early 30's. Also, the best programmers are efficient and have a business and marketing edge. If you have that you won't need to work as long because you will be creating the companies and providing the programming jobs to old and young, or rather just skilled workers in the newest industry that is transforming all other industries.
phatboyslim 17y ago
Does the report also analyze pure programming jobs, and not team lead, or management roles which previous programmers 'graduated' into, not necessarily became 'unemployed programmers'?
- drawkbox 17y ago
  Or, because programming is a meta skill, did these engineers start companies, products and are no longer programming because they are owners? Or did they pick up skills in other industries that they wanted to get into which was made easier because programming allowed them to peer into it from a unique meta perspective? Also, sure if you are just working for a big company making desktop applications before the web as this article is from, then I can see there would be limited opportunity. How does the web change that?
edw519 17y ago
Great find! Scary how it's still so relevent... "High-tech companies save money by shunning most midcareer programmers and focusing their hiring on new or recent college graduates, who are cheaper and can work lots of overtime." Not just high-tech companies, almost everyone. So screw 'em. If they're too cheap to value the contributions of their employees and don't want to treat them like human beings, they why would you want to work there? "And the skills issue is a red herring; any competent programmer, if given a chance to learn on the job, can become productive in a new software technology within a few weeks." Exactly. Like almost anyone here with any drive at all already knows. If I didn't know better, this doesn't seem like a journal article at all. Seems more like a commercial for starting your own. Still spot on 11 years later.
robryan 17y ago
At the time though the things that were happening with the internet were all largely new concepts. New graduates who had been studying heavily web based technologies would have had the advantage over an older person who may have come from a DOS background. These day's although still evolving I would say web based technologies are a lot more stable.
- alphazero 17y ago
  Now that's funny. "new concepts". "DOS". Its actually quite amusing for hackers in my age group to watch the kids "discover" ancient programming history (again (and again (...)))
Elcho 17y ago
Can we cool it with the New York Times articles? I've noticed more and more of these puff pieces and its lowering the tone.
- paulbaumgart 17y ago
  I agree they can be light on content and oversimplify things to appeal to a broader audience, but they're usually still a pretty good starting point for decent discussions.
  - Elcho 17y ago
    That's a fair point, but a balance needs to be struck, at times it seems like every other article is from a large circulation newspaper or magazine and if that trend continues it could spoil HN.
- octane 17y ago
  Being a hacker has always meant being a social engineer. NY Times is an excellent window onto mainstream media and how society thinks.
  - Elcho 17y ago
    But we can all see this window on the mainstream; where HN is special is finding those whom have synthezised a clearer or more thought provoking picture of the mainstream either through direct experience or a unique perspective. I think the distinction is between hacks and hackers. They may provoke discussion and grab attention but its just the previous media's generation's form of flaming on an industrialized scale, these articles are without the kind of integrity you get from the truly engaged and first hand experience that HN is so good at fishing out.
    - octane 17y ago
      Oh christ, get over yourself.
- nir 17y ago
brc 17y ago
Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties. The key is to keep your skills up to date and avoid the sticky-trap that is management roles. If you drift into hands-off management, the meetings-and-flowcharts current will swiftly take you away from the technical shoreline and you won't be able to get back. It takes a conscious effort to stay a technical person in most companies, and you'd better be prepared to be looked down upon from other people who go into management roles. Of the people I started working with as fellow grads, I'd say that less than 10% are still actively writing software of any kind. I nearly gave it up several times, but I'm glad I've stuck with it, because you can be so much more creative in code than with management.
- myth_drannon 17y ago
  But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time jumping from one cool tech to another. Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status . All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE). In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)
  - tsbardella 17y ago
    awesome post! for use of "prostitution" and "capitalism"

34 points by gourneau 17y ago

I suspect the main reason MS or Google or anyone else prefers young programmers is that they tend to be more committed and 'fresh', in the sense that they are not yet bitter, cynical, and hopelessly opinionated. They also tend not to have as heavy a set of personal/family obligations, so can work cheaper, longer hours etc. And of course on average, if you're too lazy to actually find out from the interviewee, they probably tend to have more up-to-date skills. OTOH, a seasoned veteran often has a knowledgebase in a specific problem domain that can be immensely valuable. However, it takes a lot of work to find the right person and ensure that his KB is the real thing, is up to date, and that the personality attached to the KB is going to mesh with the culture of the rest of the team. When things are going gangbusters, it's easier to just ignore these subtleties and hire the lusty, naive young waifs who will work their skinny little asses to the bone for da man before they realize their souls are being sucked dry by evil sorcerers.

tjic 17y ago

> 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years -- when most are still only in their early 40's -- it is down to 19 percent. That data is compatible with lots of things besides age discrimination: * a job description that mostly appeals to the young * a young and rapidly growing field where most of the 1988 CS grads are promoted to management, so that they can manage the 10x larger 1998 CS grads * etc.

patio11 17y ago
And a nation in which the average individual changes careers 3 time, for that matter.

ironkeith 17y ago

NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".

jrbedard 17y ago
The article is from 1998, Java was 3 years old.
- phatboyslim 17y ago
  Does that also mean the statistics provided by the author are meaningless since they are 10 years old and closely tied to the dot-com boom?
  - akeefer 17y ago
    Since they're backward looking statistics they actually track what happened before the dot com boom. They still might not be relevant given the current marketplace, of course.
- ironkeith 17y ago
  I appear to have made a date mistake. sigh

paulbaumgart 17y ago

"Employers justify shunting aside midcareer programmers on the ground that they lack skills in the latest software languages." I don't see what's wrong with that. Clearly, to command a higher salary, an employee has to offer more than someone who gets paid less. And if in fact that employee has less to offer than a more junior person, because their skills are obsolete, it's even more of a reason to let them go. I guess it's not a very comfortable position to be in- having to always prove your worth to an employer- but I think it's unavoidable, especially in an industry that changes quickly.

drawkbox 17y ago
True but on the flipside just because someone is young doesn't mean they will provide more value. One thing that is interesting about this article is that it was written just as the internet/web boom was happening. It is important to note that a whole slew of industries and job tracks have been created since then. It is also very important to note that software development really wasn't a field until the 70's. So what we have is a young industry, thus younger people in it. The age of someone that started development young in the early days of the web (mid-90s), let's say 1995, would be approx 32-33. Anyone older than that had to come into web from pre-web industries, thus lacking in ability to change and learn to someone coming in clean. But nowadays an industry really was born around the late 1990s that will get older and more skilled, as well as seeing young come in, at least in terms of web based development, game development and other recent web industries. It would be like when radio started where people getting into it were young, as time went on it wasn't about age but skill and value. Same will happen with software or web development. Young will always be a key factor in software and web development but the position of the industry in time gives it a skew that appears ageism is more rampant. This article was even more lodged into a time where hardly anyone knew the web would change the world and grow fields and industry as much as it did. At this point the people that were going to go into marketing, radio, tv are now all going to the web. So really, I agree it will be up to providing value and innovating but we will see the industry, especially the web industry, mature to where it isn't just the young running it. I would say a prime is after someone went to school, and programmed for at least 8-10 years. This is when programmers start becoming efficient and product developers. The earliest that could happen for most people is late 20's early 30's. Also, the best programmers are efficient and have a business and marketing edge. If you have that you won't need to work as long because you will be creating the companies and providing the programming jobs to old and young, or rather just skilled workers in the newest industry that is transforming all other industries.

phatboyslim 17y ago

Does the report also analyze pure programming jobs, and not team lead, or management roles which previous programmers 'graduated' into, not necessarily became 'unemployed programmers'?

drawkbox 17y ago
Or, because programming is a meta skill, did these engineers start companies, products and are no longer programming because they are owners? Or did they pick up skills in other industries that they wanted to get into which was made easier because programming allowed them to peer into it from a unique meta perspective? Also, sure if you are just working for a big company making desktop applications before the web as this article is from, then I can see there would be limited opportunity. How does the web change that?

edw519 17y ago

Great find! Scary how it's still so relevent... "High-tech companies save money by shunning most midcareer programmers and focusing their hiring on new or recent college graduates, who are cheaper and can work lots of overtime." Not just high-tech companies, almost everyone. So screw 'em. If they're too cheap to value the contributions of their employees and don't want to treat them like human beings, they why would you want to work there? "And the skills issue is a red herring; any competent programmer, if given a chance to learn on the job, can become productive in a new software technology within a few weeks." Exactly. Like almost anyone here with any drive at all already knows. If I didn't know better, this doesn't seem like a journal article at all. Seems more like a commercial for starting your own. Still spot on 11 years later.

robryan 17y ago

At the time though the things that were happening with the internet were all largely new concepts. New graduates who had been studying heavily web based technologies would have had the advantage over an older person who may have come from a DOS background. These day's although still evolving I would say web based technologies are a lot more stable.

alphazero 17y ago
Now that's funny. "new concepts". "DOS". Its actually quite amusing for hackers in my age group to watch the kids "discover" ancient programming history (again (and again (...)))

Elcho 17y ago

Can we cool it with the New York Times articles? I've noticed more and more of these puff pieces and its lowering the tone.

paulbaumgart 17y ago
I agree they can be light on content and oversimplify things to appeal to a broader audience, but they're usually still a pretty good starting point for decent discussions.
- Elcho 17y ago
  That's a fair point, but a balance needs to be struck, at times it seems like every other article is from a large circulation newspaper or magazine and if that trend continues it could spoil HN.
octane 17y ago
Being a hacker has always meant being a social engineer. NY Times is an excellent window onto mainstream media and how society thinks.
- Elcho 17y ago
  But we can all see this window on the mainstream; where HN is special is finding those whom have synthezised a clearer or more thought provoking picture of the mainstream either through direct experience or a unique perspective. I think the distinction is between hacks and hackers. They may provoke discussion and grab attention but its just the previous media's generation's form of flaming on an industrialized scale, these articles are without the kind of integrity you get from the truly engaged and first hand experience that HN is so good at fishing out.
  - octane 17y ago
    Oh christ, get over yourself.
nir 17y ago

brc 17y ago

Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties. The key is to keep your skills up to date and avoid the sticky-trap that is management roles. If you drift into hands-off management, the meetings-and-flowcharts current will swiftly take you away from the technical shoreline and you won't be able to get back. It takes a conscious effort to stay a technical person in most companies, and you'd better be prepared to be looked down upon from other people who go into management roles. Of the people I started working with as fellow grads, I'd say that less than 10% are still actively writing software of any kind. I nearly gave it up several times, but I'm glad I've stuck with it, because you can be so much more creative in code than with management.

myth_drannon 17y ago
But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time jumping from one cool tech to another. Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status . All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE). In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)
- tsbardella 17y ago
  awesome post! for use of "prostitution" and "capitalism"