7 ms·

Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type

by pvnick 13y ago

Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?

beat 13y ago
I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.
- emp_ 13y ago
  Hell, I feel like peaking with 31. Constantly leaning towards an own business from where I stand.
  - narrator 13y ago
    Once you reach a certain salary as an engineer the only way to make more money is to go in as an owner either as an early hire in a startup or as a founder. You can also get stock options and wait for your company to get bought. Other than that it's pretty much all down hill.
    - kfcm 13y ago
      Or use the route I went: start your own consulting business.
      - beat 13y ago
        That's the route of a lot of good people. I know so many great consultants in their 40s-50s, with superb skills and rich backgrounds.
- eksith 13y ago
  > among good technical people Good technical people appreciate others who are of equal or greater skill. And I've noticed older (no offense to you folks; I'm speaking relatively) people tend to abhor office politics and the like. Things got done because they needed to get done, not to further some hidden, convoluted, agenda. Most of the people in the upper tiers got there in their early to mid 30s.
  - vacri 13y ago
    I think it's because generally as you get older, you realise that winning office politics points doesn't really give you any reward. Any small moment of gain is fleeting, and you exchange that for destructive behaviour. It's not to say that older people can't be petty, just that proactively engaging in politics seems to be seen as not particularly worth it. My frame of reference is that I've just turned 40 - I will probably feel differently again in 10 years :)
- YZF 13y ago
  I've seen a lot of people around that age strike out on their own and start new businesses. I think that would be the "advancement" path for those who are interested in that.
  - beat 13y ago
    That's exactly where I'm at. Building a startup from 20 years of accumulated experience in enterprise. I see a massive pain point and no tool that really addresses it - just a bunch of hacks and workarounds that everyone uses. I like a lot of things about enterprise development, but I dislike a bunch of things, too. If this all works, I get to create a startup environment and total control (much more pleasant working conditions) and the potential for more substantial reward, but I can keep working on problems I like to work on.
kfcm 13y ago
When first starting out many years (decades?!?) ago, I experienced what could best be called "reverse agism". Guys in their 40s-50s were concerned about hiring a 23-25 year old "wet-behind-the-ears" high-energy "kid" who might make them look bad. And there weren't many twenty-somethings around Funny thing is, now that I'm in that 45-50 range, things have inverted. Now I rarely see someone above 40 or 45, unless it's management or infrastructure. It's all people in their late 20s, early 30s.
kfcm 13y ago
Another consideration is it all depends upon where you're located--geographically, company-wise, and technology area. At least in my observation. Infrastructure tends to have less ageism than development/software engineering. Large corporations relatively less than start-ups (agism in corps is usually tied to/masked by salary level; "it's about cutting costs"). Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees).
- VLM 13y ago
  "Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees)." Unfortunately that has not been my experience at all. Aside from personal experience, I read constantly on HN about how you can walk in off the street and get a job in SV and NYC if you have any skills at all. To say that's not the experience here would be an understatement. You pretty much have to know someone. One advantage of being in this game since '81 is I know a lot of people. A BSCS from a decent school will get you a job in midwest/rural, its just going to be entry level helpdesk resetting email passwords, or pulling cat5 cable. Probably about half of grads are underemployed, I see them at work all the time. Not to say there's no advantages; if you can get one of the "good jobs" the standard of living is spectacular in midwest/rural compared to the coasts, and there's better recreation (well, depends on your personal likes/dislikes, etc). Culture is better, generally. Every once in a while, I take a 90 minute, 100 MPH commuter train into downtown Chicago and remind myself why I don't want to live in a big city. Or go to a conference on the coasts, or visit Europe again. I don't live in a big city; that's why I can easily afford that kind of lifestyle.
jpdoctor 13y ago
Great questions, answers inline. > Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? None, but I might be a weird case. When I finished grad school, I was hired by TI, then Bell Labs. Both treated me like royalty. Because I am not satisfied with being treated like royalty, I went out and founded a company during 2000. I raised a ton of money from VCs (money was free back then). Bootstrapped another. So I've been running my own businesses ever since. > Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? A bunch of years in there were hardware hacking. So lots of C and C++ through the 90s, some perl for maintainance. Never saw the need for trendy stuff until I saw Ruby on Rails. That made light work of projects I had in front of me. > Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together? Largest management position was CTO of an 85 person company. I'm happy to manage people, and believe that I can manage over the range of herding-cats to drill-Sargent. I definitely prefer the role of Field Marshall to General, ie rolling in the mud with the troops compared to suit-and-tie rub-elbows-with-those-who-need-their-elbows-rubbed. Lately though: All hacking + customer management. We're growing, so I suspect managing more people is going to be back in my future.
- pvnick 13y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful response!
- Oculus 13y ago
  Yes, thank you for your short write up! Really interesting read :)
mindcrime 13y ago
Another "old person" chiming in... Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Not really, and not in a negative sense. I did have an experience once where my boss sent me out to help one of our younger consultants on an engagement because, as he put it, the client "wants to see somebody with some grey in their beard". IOW, my presence was largely not needed in the technical sense, but I was there to contribute "gravitas" and comfort to the client. Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? I reject your distinction between "trendy" and "entrprisey". Enterprise software and systems rock, and there's significant overlap at the systems level anyway. You may see Scala, Hadoop, Mahout, Mesos, Spark, S4, Clojure, etc. as "trendy, non enterprise" technologies, while I'm spending my time thinking of ways to use that stuff in the enterprise. :-) Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together? I have never had, and will never have, any real desire to be in "management" at someone else's company. Now, being a founder/CEO, that's a different story. I love the idea of building a company, and building the kind of company I always wanted to work for. And I've always been fascinated by marketing and some other aspects of the business world. So for me to now be a founder and in a position to run a company, is a real blast in many ways (in other ways, it's a long, hard, tough, painful, slow slog).
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  > "I was there to...comfort[ ]the client." :( it's sad that this is sometimes required. Agism works both ways, I guess.

by pvnick 13y ago

beat 13y ago

I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.

emp_ 13y ago
Hell, I feel like peaking with 31. Constantly leaning towards an own business from where I stand.
- narrator 13y ago
  Once you reach a certain salary as an engineer the only way to make more money is to go in as an owner either as an early hire in a startup or as a founder. You can also get stock options and wait for your company to get bought. Other than that it's pretty much all down hill.
  - kfcm 13y ago
    Or use the route I went: start your own consulting business.
    - beat 13y ago
      That's the route of a lot of good people. I know so many great consultants in their 40s-50s, with superb skills and rich backgrounds.
eksith 13y ago
> among good technical people Good technical people appreciate others who are of equal or greater skill. And I've noticed older (no offense to you folks; I'm speaking relatively) people tend to abhor office politics and the like. Things got done because they needed to get done, not to further some hidden, convoluted, agenda. Most of the people in the upper tiers got there in their early to mid 30s.
- vacri 13y ago
  I think it's because generally as you get older, you realise that winning office politics points doesn't really give you any reward. Any small moment of gain is fleeting, and you exchange that for destructive behaviour. It's not to say that older people can't be petty, just that proactively engaging in politics seems to be seen as not particularly worth it. My frame of reference is that I've just turned 40 - I will probably feel differently again in 10 years :)
YZF 13y ago
I've seen a lot of people around that age strike out on their own and start new businesses. I think that would be the "advancement" path for those who are interested in that.
- beat 13y ago
  That's exactly where I'm at. Building a startup from 20 years of accumulated experience in enterprise. I see a massive pain point and no tool that really addresses it - just a bunch of hacks and workarounds that everyone uses. I like a lot of things about enterprise development, but I dislike a bunch of things, too. If this all works, I get to create a startup environment and total control (much more pleasant working conditions) and the potential for more substantial reward, but I can keep working on problems I like to work on.

kfcm 13y ago

When first starting out many years (decades?!?) ago, I experienced what could best be called "reverse agism". Guys in their 40s-50s were concerned about hiring a 23-25 year old "wet-behind-the-ears" high-energy "kid" who might make them look bad. And there weren't many twenty-somethings around Funny thing is, now that I'm in that 45-50 range, things have inverted. Now I rarely see someone above 40 or 45, unless it's management or infrastructure. It's all people in their late 20s, early 30s.

kfcm 13y ago

Another consideration is it all depends upon where you're located--geographically, company-wise, and technology area. At least in my observation. Infrastructure tends to have less ageism than development/software engineering. Large corporations relatively less than start-ups (agism in corps is usually tied to/masked by salary level; "it's about cutting costs"). Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees).

VLM 13y ago
"Midwest/rural areas less than large metros and "hip locations" (due mainly to smaller pools of potential employees)." Unfortunately that has not been my experience at all. Aside from personal experience, I read constantly on HN about how you can walk in off the street and get a job in SV and NYC if you have any skills at all. To say that's not the experience here would be an understatement. You pretty much have to know someone. One advantage of being in this game since '81 is I know a lot of people. A BSCS from a decent school will get you a job in midwest/rural, its just going to be entry level helpdesk resetting email passwords, or pulling cat5 cable. Probably about half of grads are underemployed, I see them at work all the time. Not to say there's no advantages; if you can get one of the "good jobs" the standard of living is spectacular in midwest/rural compared to the coasts, and there's better recreation (well, depends on your personal likes/dislikes, etc). Culture is better, generally. Every once in a while, I take a 90 minute, 100 MPH commuter train into downtown Chicago and remind myself why I don't want to live in a big city. Or go to a conference on the coasts, or visit Europe again. I don't live in a big city; that's why I can easily afford that kind of lifestyle.

jpdoctor 13y ago

Great questions, answers inline. > Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? None, but I might be a weird case. When I finished grad school, I was hired by TI, then Bell Labs. Both treated me like royalty. Because I am not satisfied with being treated like royalty, I went out and founded a company during 2000. I raised a ton of money from VCs (money was free back then). Bootstrapped another. So I've been running my own businesses ever since. > Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? A bunch of years in there were hardware hacking. So lots of C and C++ through the 90s, some perl for maintainance. Never saw the need for trendy stuff until I saw Ruby on Rails. That made light work of projects I had in front of me. > Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together? Largest management position was CTO of an 85 person company. I'm happy to manage people, and believe that I can manage over the range of herding-cats to drill-Sargent. I definitely prefer the role of Field Marshall to General, ie rolling in the mud with the troops compared to suit-and-tie rub-elbows-with-those-who-need-their-elbows-rubbed. Lately though: All hacking + customer management. We're growing, so I suspect managing more people is going to be back in my future.

pvnick 13y ago
Thank you for your thoughtful response!
Oculus 13y ago
Yes, thank you for your short write up! Really interesting read :)

mindcrime 13y ago

Another "old person" chiming in... Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Not really, and not in a negative sense. I did have an experience once where my boss sent me out to help one of our younger consultants on an engagement because, as he put it, the client "wants to see somebody with some grey in their beard". IOW, my presence was largely not needed in the technical sense, but I was there to contribute "gravitas" and comfort to the client. Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? I reject your distinction between "trendy" and "entrprisey". Enterprise software and systems rock, and there's significant overlap at the systems level anyway. You may see Scala, Hadoop, Mahout, Mesos, Spark, S4, Clojure, etc. as "trendy, non enterprise" technologies, while I'm spending my time thinking of ways to use that stuff in the enterprise. :-) Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together? I have never had, and will never have, any real desire to be in "management" at someone else's company. Now, being a founder/CEO, that's a different story. I love the idea of building a company, and building the kind of company I always wanted to work for. And I've always been fascinated by marketing and some other aspects of the business world. So for me to now be a founder and in a position to run a company, is a real blast in many ways (in other ways, it's a long, hard, tough, painful, slow slog).

tehwalrus 13y ago
> "I was there to...comfort[ ]the client." :( it's sad that this is sometimes required. Agism works both ways, I guess.