Ask Slashdot: IT Career Path After 35? 376
An anonymous reader writes "All my friends seem to be moving towards a managerial role, and I'm concerned about my increasing age in a business where, according to some, 30 might as well be 50. But I still feel young, and feel like I have so much to learn. So many interesting technical challenges cross my path, as I manage to move towards larger and more complex projects. I am in higher demand than ever, often with multiple headhunters contacting me in the same day. But will it last? Is age discrimination a myth? Are there statistics on how many IT people move into management? I know some older programmers who got bored with management and successfully resumed a tech-only career. Others started their own small business. What has been your experience? Do you/have you assumed a managerial role? Did you enjoy it? Have you managed to stay current and marketable long after 35?"
Find a job you love (Score:5, Insightful)
...and you'll never work another day in your life.
- Confucius
The reality of the situation is that you'll always find yourself doing something you hate, be it financial recordkeeping, slopping out the latrine or prepping the coffee machine for a hard day's thinking. Sometimes a drastic career change means starting at the bottom of the ladder again, bringing back memories of your first job at 16 fetching and carrying for the fat cunt in his leather chair, for minimum wage and zero gratitude. Deal with it.
Speaking for myself, I was never one to be sticking it to "The Man", I have always been "The Man", and will be "The Man" until the day I die.
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this things i love are not jobs.
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It is all about perspective. You will always toil away at something. Whether or not you love it is up to you.
Re:Find a job you love (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one thing that every job and every employer has their less than stellar moments, that's what they're paying you for. It's another thing to run into a career dead end where your skills aren't really in demand and you're either unemployed, flipping fries because you can't get a relevant job or clinging to a dead end job because the institutional knowledge you have is the only thing keeping you employed. Of course a lot of that is random chance for better or for worse, you'll never who will or won't hire you or if the shifting winds of the market will suddenly leave you without a job. But a lot of it also conscious choice, for example I once left a job primarily because I felt I was becoming too specialized in a particular tool. I felt that if I wanted to stay easily employable, I'd have to diversify. I couldn't have gotten the job I have today if I'd stayed that path.
Another example is that really through no fault of my own I had to swap employers several times in a relatively short amount of time, I know I could explain it well in an interview but it raises flags if you're just glancing through my CV. So now I'm planning to stay with my current employer to build credibility that I can commit and won't just head for greener pastures in less than a year. That is quite deliberate management of my career and I'm actively aware that it's not what I know I know that matters, it's what I can convince others I know. For example in my last job part of the reason they hired me was certifications, I didn't need those to do the job but they turned out to be very helpful in showing that I could.
I think your answer is a little simplistic, continuing a coding career might seem a good idea today. But what's coming down river, is it heavy rapids and a waterfall around the next bend? That's what he's asking. It might be okay to become a truck driver today. It might be a lot less nice in 20 years if your job has been taken over by autonomous cars and you got no marketable skills anymore. Personally I wouldn't worry too much about it, good coders will be in demand. But you might want to set your wage expectations correctly, it might not be way to earn the fattest paychecks as a 50-60 year old.
Re:Find a job you love (Score:5, Insightful)
the answer to that one is also simplistic: there is no job security in any industry in the Western hemisphere any more except HR management and front line social services. ANYTHING operated in the private sector is a case of looking over your shoulder every minute of every day, because there will be someone as paperskilled as you are but twenty years younger and twenty years lower down the salary expectation, then you're out a job. For work in the public sector, your job security depends on how well you can cover management's arses when shit goes south.
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Same situation here. Where I am now, I'm one of the youngest devs at 47, and the majority of the rest of the dev t
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Well, let's now hope that is sooner than later, you PoS
Ah, nothing like someone who sees the entire world in terms of how much he hates the people who make something of themselves.
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heh... if it wasn't for you commenting I'd've never seen that, just wow what vitriol. I think his mother might not have hugged him enough. Or too much. Either way, AC, you have issues I can't help you with.
YES! (Score:5, Interesting)
I work with someone who started an IT career in their mid 30s in an entry level (help desk) position. I've seen people retire from IT from the same help desk, the same as I've seen people advance to other parts of the company and other government agencies. At 28 I'm actually the second youngest on our team. When I say help desk that's just the beginning too. We do production monitoring as well as being system operators.
You are NOT too old to start in IT!
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One thing you will know if you have been in IT for a while. If you are simply competent and care about the work you are already miles ahead of most o
Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Work for a medium sized/large, established company, not a startup run by kids. The only place I've ever seen agism is at startups where everyone is in their early 20s. They all think that they're the bees knees, and that no one could possible know better than them, and because they never hire anyone older, they never find out that they're wrong. At larger shops, you'll find a lot more experienced people who know that age is a benefit, not a detriment.
Re:Simple... (Score:4, Interesting)
It sucks, but certifications are a way of demonstrating that you have enough commitment to the field to get them.
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Informative)
Really?
Things that make me run away (as a guy in his late 30s with a successful software development career so far):
1. Organisations that don't value skill and experience and instead only want to hire young (== cheap) people
2. Organisations that assume older and more experienced developers can't use new technologies (!= choose not to use some new technologies, because they're smart enough to see through the hype and prefer to rely on tried and tested tools instead)
3. Organisations that rely on buzzwords or certificates for hiring (== you get to work with the kind of people who rely on buzzwords and certificates to get hired)
4. Organisations that expect you not to have a fair work/life balance (== it's not whether or not you have a family that we really care about, we just want people to put in crazy hours for no money, almost certainly because we're incompetent at management and don't realise this strategy rarely succeeds anyway)
Just avoid those four warning signs and there is plenty of work out there if you're an older programmer who is any good (== you have N years of experience and the skill of a senior developer, not the same 1 year of experience N times and still the skill level of a junior developer).
Re:Simple... (Score:4, Informative)
It sucks, but certifications are a way of demonstrating that you have enough commitment to the field to get them.
It's really sad, but it's true.
I exited a large multinational corporation with a senior title, but no certifications simply because in my career path they were never needed (I moved up inside the company, with people knowing who I am and what I can do). Now it bites me. Especially because most of them are basically scams: They're crazy expensive, but they don't test any actual expertise, just your ability to memorize the correct answers from the study documents, and convince your boss to put his signature under the "yes, he's doing this thing for the past X years" paper.
But sadly, while they don't open any doors to places you want to work in, their absence can close doors that you want to stay open.
Re:Simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I'd advise the reverse, at least in terms of company size. A small company is more likely to value you for what you do, rather than want to replace you because your salary has become "too high". The small company I work for has a family feel to it, with zero office politics, but possibly not the same career advancement possibilities you'd get at a megacorp.
Perhaps startups are a special case; an established small company will be more stable. Or at least, your future is tied more to the performance of the company than the whims of those above you.
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I ended up at a startup run by adults, actually in Silicon Valley. Contrary to the usual stereotypes, we do value experience and actually have a lot of engineers who are over 40. We have hardly anyone in a "management" role, so many of them had to make the transition from management back to actual development when coming to us. In fact, its only been very recently that we've hired any notable number of engineers who didn't already have some post-college work experience under their belt.
Of course we function
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1) You can't fake management. I've fired far more managers than top technical guys. If you're not really into management, you're not going to make it. It's starting over in an entirely new skillset. Be a team lead for a few people if necessary or expected for your company.
2) Find a really tough area. It's probably not going to be the new cool language of the week. My top older programmers have been mainframe
Financial independence (Score:2, Insightful)
It should be your goal in life to become as financially independent as possible as early in life as you can. Being prudent about your mortgages, cars, investments, education etc. can enable you to be fully debt free early on. After you are debt free, most of your questions become easier to answer. If you owe nothing to nobody than it is easy for you to move on, start a business or look for a new possibility. A lot of people are in precarious positions where they are humiliated daily but cannot leave due to
Lesson Learned (Score:2)
Carefully cultivate your perceived value and age is far less of a concern.
Learn a "legacy" skill (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm beginning to think the "eventualy move into management" when you get to your mid to late 30's is just the normal development path in IT. I'm desperately trying to avoid it, myself, but as I get older I constantly find management jobs being thrust in my direction.
That's working the private sector, of course. In the public sector, there was nothing to worry about, since nobody ever seemed to retire -- I could've stayed a programmer well into my 50's.
The alternative is to learn some skill that never seems to be fall out of use -- I see tons of graybeards in my company that do nothing but maintain aging AS400 and larger mainframe systems all day.
Honestly, they seem to be the happiest of the bunch...
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legacy skills can be extremely (500-5000/hour) valuable, and you may be unfireable.
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I'm beginning to think the "eventualy move into management" when you get to your mid to late 30's is just the normal development path in IT.
Not just IT. But its based on business in general being completely braindead. In this particular case, the vast majority of companies simply don't have interesting non-management career paths. If you want to earn more, get more responsibility, rise in the hierarchy, you've gotta go into management, because the clueless morons who design the company career pyramid are all managers themselves and can't grasp the concept of valuable people who are not managers.
My suggestion would be to look for a company that
Of course you can! (Score:5, Informative)
The companies that discriminate on age are not the ones you want to work for.
There are plenty of companies out there that appreciate the older worker has more experience and is willing to pay for that. Probably not startups but who cares?
Myself, I'm in my early 40s and run my own little consultancy and life is pretty good with no end of decent clients in sight just yet.
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To add to this, I work for the State these days. Coming from a private sector shrinkwrap software company where the median age was ~28 and the average tenure was ~2 years, to the State where the average age is probably closer to 35-40, and the average tenure is 10+ years, it was a huge shock.
There is good and bad that comes with it. I've seen more complacency with jobs/technology. People aren't interested in making a jump to newer technologies and patterns because they don't feel like they have to. But on t
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I've actually looked into public service work a few times, but one thing that I see quite commonly (in my state, anyway) is that skills are extremely undervalued in terms of salary. It's tough to justify going from a position making $90-100K to a comparable one making only $65K, although there are often benefits like pensions that can offset that somewhat.
52 and still going (Score:5, Informative)
Keeping up with current trends is a must. My strengths are knowledge of C++, system programming, and the ability to work in large complex systems.
There are a lot of things I've learned, that are valuable, and not taught anymore.
A be reason for the age issue is younger workers in general tend to be cheaper. But then again, sometimes you get what you pay for
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The industry was never regulated. I know, I've been in it for over 25 years. As for fattening, each generation makes more than the last. I make a lot of money but I see kids fresh out of school getting paid 80k+ at places like Amazon and Google. It took me 15 years to get that. Granted, I make a lot more than that now but I have no doubt that kids today will laugh at what I'm making now when they're my age.
Do you want to be a manager? (Score:5, Insightful)
If so, pursue it. Don't do it because all your friends are becoming managers.
Re: Management skillsets !=IT skillsets (Score:2)
Speaking as someone who did work his way and just got demoted after only 5 months I have to say management is not for everyone.
You think (l)users are annoying as helpdesk or desktop support? Wait til they make unreasonable demands, bash you, attack you and your team, and promise customers things without your knowledge that you can not possibly deliver and then hold you accountable when it fails while they take a bonus?
That folks sounds like hell but is management 101. Granted I have incompetent managers at
35? (Score:4, Interesting)
...the coffee almost shot thru my nose!
i'm 49, and still love solving technical challenges and learning new shit, so I still code...I must admit its getting harder and harder these days to be on a "team" of 20-somethings. It's very possible these folk I infrequently work with consider me a "loser" for still being in the trenches.
fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
maybe you will enjoy management, maybe not...perhaps give it a try for awhile and see how it fits you...you can always easily go back.
imfuo, the hardest part of *not* going into management is the social aspect of it.
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With a few notable exceptions, my experience with coders in management is that they were the ones that could not hack the coding and looked for an easier job. It is pretty clear who the "losers" are.
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I'm 61, and still love solving technical challenges and learning new shit, so I still code...and it helps that I have skills that many consider "antiquated." In the case of my current job, knowing intimately the details of RS-232 based communication and drivers for same -- how to correctly program the NS16550 and ASIC cell equivalents, and more importantly how younger coders MISprogram the chip -- puts me head and shoulders over some of the new grads. Having more than 40 years' experience in project life
42 years old here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
And still technical. 100% technical. There have been a few cases where I felt like I was denied a job because I was too old ... "not a good fit with company culture" and that sort of thing... but as others have said, those companies just disqualified themselves.
The reality is that I'm a better programmer now than when I was 25. I havre a much better understanding of "craftsmanship" -- things like testing, documentation, making sure my code is not "brittle" -- even though my ability to devour new technologies has slacked a bit.
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Exactly. There is also the little frequently overlooked point that "new" is not equal to "better". In programming languages, methods, frameworks, often the opposite is the case.
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sounds like me. 43 here. Just recently signed on to manage a few hundred machines at a local college. Experience certainly helps with knowing how to make things that will work well in the long-term.
It also tends to mean you have a very broad skillset. I know I do. And everything I've learned up to this point is relevent for the job, it's like my work up to this point has been building me up the skills that I need to be a perfect fit for this position.
Time is the only thing that will turn you into that
Domain knowledge seems to help (Score:2)
I've noticed that guys how program in niche areas (such as computational acoustics) manage to stick with it as long as they want, if they really know what they're doing. Their domain expertise trumps ageism in the job market. OTOH, it's also a small job market, which affects things like where they can live.
Most youg ones don't know crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
As somebody that does code reviews (for security) and some development besides doing security consulting, I can state with conviction that most young coders do not know what they are doing. At least some of them get better with age. But the point is, hiring based on age is counterproductive for code development jobs. Of course, many managers think that young coders are "fresher" and they do cost less. Well, they are "fresher" as in "more clueless" and they do cost less for a good reason: They are less productive by sane metrics. They also talk back less, as they have far less of a clue.
So my advice is stick with what you love doing and search for an employer that has not succumbed to the stupid "young is better" fad.
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This, 100%. I've seen a lot of brilliant, experienced mature IT people. I've seen a few stupid, boneheaded mature IT people. For young people, the ratio is reversed.
Of course, I say that now that I'm in that 2nd category myself. When I was much younger, of course I thought I had the answer to everything and the people writing boring standards were boring and old, and my brilliant reinvention is so much better. Fortunately, my field was always security and cryptography and there you learn very fast and very
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Indeed. Always great are the examples of people rolling their own ciphers, their own entropy collectors and their own crypto-protocols! (Well, except for the very few people that are actually good at it. And even they often scrap a design years later or say it was not very good.)
Re:Most youg ones don't know crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
For "senior" technical people that actually are not good at it, that is certainly true. I have seen that as a consultant countless times. On the other hand, those that are senior and _are_ good engineers, typically welcome (competent) criticism as a chance to learn even more. So basically this is just another effect of hiring incompetent engineers.
Incidentally, that incompetence breeds incompetence is a very old effect. There is also the effect of people that want to make their life easy: "How, do you ensure underlings are loyal? One answer is to promote incompetents." And "If you promote people who deserve it, they will never be grateful." -- Machiavelli
While it sounds like and old, tired cliché, you only get technological excellence from people that have technological excellence as their primary goal in life.
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Of course, thinking that the technology a company is developing is so new and different that experience is meaningless is usually the effect of not having enough experience.
A lot of things in the IT industry seem to move in cycles, and while there are certainly those that seem to stagnate of any age, for those inclined to continously adopt new technology having experienced a similar technological shift twenty years ago rather means you're halfway to understanding the implications of an up and coming one, ho
Sure (Score:3)
I started out coding, then went into systems engineering, mostly server farms and LAN/WAN design, in my mid/late 20s. Then around age 30 I did go into management, operations and projects, for a number of years. Now, in my late 40s I am a senior network security engineer for a consulting firm. I make the same money I made in management (quite a bit) and have a lot more fun. You certainly can stay in or move back into technical roles past the age of 35.
Is age discrimination a myth? (Score:2)
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Yeah we get big salaries and important projects the "kids" half our age don't. Sucks to be them.
Make age a strength (Score:2)
Know how to interview (Score:2)
Know how to interview. Dye your hair. Keep relevant. Keep healthy. Have a niche. Have a plan b. Keep a good attitude.
The interview process will change. They know you have the ability to do the job. Questions are more around of do you give a shit, directly or indirectly.
Grey hair changes peoples mindsets about you, you can stop dying it once you are secure in the job. Or, just shave it all off. Dress young.
Bragging about cobol skills just annoys people and are next to worthless at most jobs. Know
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dyed hair looks fake, don't hide your age. plenty of places value experience and pay for it. I've been manager twice in the past but make more now in architect role, am over fifty with white hair on the lower sides and a third gray in the rest. I do enjoy my work, can't imagine faking it.
You don't want to work there (Score:3)
My advice would be not to go into management unless there is a way to keep your technical skills up. You won't find the headhunters as eager to place managers, except the highly technically adept ones. If you let your technical skills rot, it may become more difficult to stay employed.
I've worked as a developer, architect, project leader and "director of development" (whoa) and I prefer the technical contributor roles -- but that's just me.
As far as the companies that appear to be "age-ist" -- run away! A lot of that is done because the younger developers can be had for less money, they can and will work longer hours (usually because they don't have a family or really any life outside work) and they just don't know better. I can tell you from the times I have done "leadership" that I would rather have two skilled old-timers than four fresh-outs working on my team. The two old timers will almost always out-produce the four fresh-uts in terms of actual delivery and quality. So you get what you pay for.
I Don't Know How Universal It Is ... (Score:4, Interesting)
But it can happen.
I'm 43, and managing a group of software engineers at a streaming company; my peers range from early 30s to early 50s, but there are other managers and directors here who are (at least somewhat) older than that.
More importantly, though, there are engineers here who are older than me, and who you could argue are as senior as I am, or more senior (in either the "more people listen to them" sense or the "they get paid more than I do" sense). This company also has a strong belief that you shouldn't go into management because you want a promotion or more money, so people who enjoy being engineers are encouraged to continue being engineers. There's no salary cap on being an engineer, and for pretty much as long as I've been a manager here, I've had engineers reporting to me who made more money (sometimes, significantly more money) than I do.
Having demonstrated pretty decent Individual Contributor (IC) skills, my last two bosses have always said that if I ever got tired of management and wanted to do the IC thing again for a while, they'd be delighted to find a slot for me.
But that's us. And we aren't representative of the business, I suspect. We're not QUITE the outlier -- high tech company, Silicon Valley, ~16 years in operation -- but we're definitely not your 20-person SOMA startup running on Red Bull and testosterone.
I'll tell you one life lesson my parents taught me, though, that has served me well: Figure out what you love doing, and do that. You'll occasionally be buffeted off-course. That's OK -- get back on-course.
I've been married for about 7 years now; early in our relationship, when I was an IC in another company, making a lot less money, my wife argued I should be thinking about maximizing my family's income and financial stability and go into management just because of that; she persuaded me, and I went into management at that company, and was profoundly unhappy. Finally, luckily, got laid off in 2009. We both learned our lesson, and these days my wife's only rule is "pick a job that will make you happy; if we need more money I'll go out and make it." Works well.
Depends on the person (Score:2)
I turned 60 this year (Score:2)
I've been in software development for 38 years, and my favorite years have been spent doing Mac or iOS development (Mac in the 80's, and Mac or iOS for the past seven years). I write apps as a hobby, which helps keep my skills current, and my employer is (mostly) paying me to do what I enjoy; it doesn't get better than that.
To be honest, writing software for an employer can be a drag, because corporate decision-making processes can be frustrating. But I spent about 10 of those years with some degree or othe
Yes, No, Sort-of (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are also older managers who will not hire you: they appreciate the willingness of younger engineers, without strong experience, to be driven or manipulated to make specific goals and not to _question_ the wisdom of management. It's very difficult to be in the field without some sense of politics, or to know when management is lying to you, and such a manager will not appreciate having their work questioned.
But to stay active, I'd strongly urge getting active in freeware and open source projects. Whate
50 is the new 30 (Score:2)
I started in IT in my early 30's and I work as a consultant at a small consulting company that I don't own. I am now almost 50. Throughout my career, I have stayed up to date on technology and gotten certified at a high level in everything relevant. I am technical and my income is 6 figures. Right now I specialize in storage and virtualization technologies, and I hold storage industry certs that are only available to EMC employees and partners. These limited-access certs have a lot of value. As techno
Be careful (Score:3)
It might seem enticing to move into a management job but it's not for everyone. The skills that have made you an excellent programmer might not necessarily make you a good manager. I often use sports analogies to illustrate this. Look at all of the former outstanding athletes that have been utter failures as coaches and/or general managers.
The other thing to consider is this: if you are a good programmer it is probably because you really enjoy it and have worked hard at it to improve. Are you going to enjoy being a manager? Because if you don't really enjoy it then those 2 hour meetings are going to seem like they last all day long.
I have tried my hand at management and it's not for me. Most of the meetings seemed like, for me, a waste of time. I liked fixing code that didn't work. I didn't like fixing other peoples petty personnel squabbles. Lower and middle management can be a real wasteland. I looked around the room and I saw a lot of people that were not very good at what they did. Many of them seemed resigned to the fact that they were never going to get promoted into upper management. Many of them exhibited poor leadership and decision making skills. The worst part of it was all the politics and back stabbing. I just couldn't stomach it.
So I decided to stick with what I enjoy and what I'm good at.
Having said all of that, it was a valuable experience. I admire good managers. It's a tough job. If you are fortunate enough to have a good manager then count yourself lucky. Being a manager gave me valuable insight into the "other" side of business - the non technical side of it.
If you want to stay with programming you can. I know a lot of people in their 60's that are working at it and doing well. Unfortunately, all of them are consultants. Age discrimination is real. But as a contractor, employers see you differently. Instead of being a medical liability you are praised for your experience.
Do What You Love (Score:2)
Do what you love and are good at doing. A lot of people in management are definitely not cut out to be managers. (At least where I work) people tend to get promoted into roles of supervision and management because they're good problem solvers, but being a manager involves a completely different skill set. If you enjoy supporting people and teams, making it easier for them to do their work, getting them the information that they need, ensuring they have the professional development and work environment to th
Do what you want and try *not to be afraid* (Score:2)
Must be a hot issue (Score:2)
This issue is coming up every few weeks. Must be a hot topic for a lot of us.
My answer is the same, every time. I'm 60, I've been developing software for about 35 years, right now I make Android apps. I'm happy, and I think I'll stay in this business for one or two more decades.
So what's your point?
age discrimination is not a myth, BUT (Score:2)
I didn't ever really encounter it until I passed 50. You have some time yet to figure things out. Unless you *LOOK* old, then you're screwed ;-)
Also, age discrimination is common, but definitely not universal. There are plenty of employers who value experience--as long as you don't stagnate, and it sounds like you're the type who will never do that.
I turn 50 in a couple months and still coding (Score:2)
I think agism is real in some environments, but it varies company by company and it's actually getting better.
If you keep coding, and if you establish a reputation as someone that knows what they are doing you should be fine. Building relationships is key, but not in some cheesy way. If you're passionate about software and get along with people and treat them with respect, that should be enough. At least it has been for me.
Age was an advantage for me (Score:2)
I'm 43. After having been sucked in management in two occasions, two years ago I've joined the core team at Stack Overflow as a full stack developer.
I've never been happier.
Age was useful because it gave me more time to enrich my knowledge and experience.
Depends? (Score:2)
When I was last looking around a few years ago, I had a company come out and say that my age (early 40's back then) might be a problem for the chemistry in the office (mostly mid to late 20s?), but they were the exception. Everyone else was interested in the projects I had worked on and the tech I had been using.
So... I'm sure the discrimination is out there, but there are also a ton of companies that value the experience a person with some time under their belt can provide.
Larry Wall Unemployed With Four Children (Score:2)
When the response of industry leaders and Congress to the collapse in the jobs market of 2000 was to increase H-1b worker visas, it should have been a signal to any sane youngster US citizen (who wasn't an Asian immigrant) to steer clear of the IT industry. Yes, there are jobs that are well paying and yes there are a lot of US citizens, even older US citizens, who are getting them despite the insane guest worker policies pursued by Asian ethnic nepotism taking over Fortune 1000 IT hiring authority.
But thin
Get over it... (Score:2)
Turning 35 Isn't End of World (Score:4, Informative)
I became a video game tester and a lead tester at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, different owners, multiple personality disorder) when I was 28-years-old. Most kids entering the business don't believe that video game existed before they were born. I used to freak them out by introducing them to a tester who worked on arcade video games in the 1980's and another tester who worked on pen-and-paper games in the 1970's.
After three years of testing video games and three years of being a lead tester, I went into help desk support at the tender young age of 34. That was 11 years ago. These days I'm doing security remediation by consoling into hurt computers and fixing broken users. Most of my coworkers are in their 50's. The nice thing about info security is that you really need to have 10+ years in I.T. experience. A high hurdle for kids coming out of school and H1B candidates from India. This field is expected to grow in the years to come.
Age doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Age doesn't matter - I've had multiple rather old people on my team of software engineers. Age really doesn't matter.
However, as you get older and your knowledge and experience grows, you will get parasites. Instead of applying your knowledge and experience developing software like you used to, you will be answering all kinds of questions, performing little chores etc. because you happen to know how to because of your experience... to the point that you can no longer just be a software engineer. Research has shown that after each interruption it takes about 17 minutes to get back to the job. On average. For complex coding jobs, this time may be much longer and just a single question about something important but not directly related to your job may get you out of the flow for the rest of the day.
You may need to switch jobs to avoid this; once you start getting more than a handful of such requests that are not part of your coding job, run.
Also, consistently being an asshole may prevent this. But that's probably similarly detrimental to you career...
IT careers end when you decide it does. (Score:3)
I'll be turning 50 soon and I am starting a new job tomorrow as a Senior Sys Admin. I find that as I get older, I get better. I can do thing in a few minutes that others take a week to do ( if they can even do it). I learn new languages in a couple of weeks. I have coded in over 30 now.
People who think IT careers end by 35 shouldn't have been in IT to begin with.
You're still wet behind the ears, kid (Score:3)
Just hit 57 and working on node/express + html5 + jquery + couchdb on top of legacy PHP/MySQL backend. Planning to start rewriting the backend in grails, hopefully soon.
What I've learned: solve the immediate problems at hand, deliver early and often, and don't worry about potential issues that may not manifest themselves or might be lower priority by the time you confront them.
The biggest problem I've seen is that projects kill themselves through overengineering by ambitious young folks with big dreams. The fact is, boring old analysis and dreaded working with the customer are the keys to success. Solving the day-to-day problems of a business is essential, not transformative solutions that take years to develop and are a crapshoot at best.
Also, there are a lot of small, established companies that have interesting problems to solve, and if you're good, you can help choose the technologies that will be used to tackle them. There's a lot of satisfaction in that.
A few words from a 47-year old guy (Score:4, Informative)
Late breaking and a three letter word (Score:3)
Re: Instead of carrying on as a one-man band - (Score:5, Insightful)
You make this sound simple. You are glossing over a lot of detail that requires non-programming skill. Especially given he is clearly trying to avoid a management role, why eould you even suggest this? At a minimum, he needs to understand the business and managerial and risk mitigation functions he will need to play, in order to determine whether he has the skills required and desire to play those roles.
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If he has the experience that he says he has, he should already have the business and risk mitigation functions under control. As a programmer, I presumably has spent his career developing programs that the business needs. If he cannot anticipate business needs by now, he probably lacks the intelligence to be in management anyway. The same thing goes for mitigating risk. If he cannot foresee project risks and is still relying on others to tell him what to work on, and what NOT to do, then he is not much
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he probably lacks the intelligence to be in management anyway.
LOL +1 Funny. Unless you mean he lacks the kind of intelligence, i.e. Emotional Intelligence, required in management. Even that I would disagree with, there are many different strengths a manager can have and no one is strong in all areas. A high EI manager may be good at reading how their staff feels about what they're doing but shit at strategic planning.
I don't see anything wrong with remaining a mid-level programmer, better to serve as a good example through your code and behavior than to suffer from th
Re: Instead of carrying on as a one-man band - (Score:3)
He doesn't necessarily have to take a managerial role, but he does have to understand he will probably reach a relatively low ceiling of pay / responsibilities if he doesn't. One man can only be so valuable with only his own labor. Taking on managerial roles allows skilled people to become a force multiplier, which increases their value.
But if someone is willing to cap out at around $125k (Chicagoland salary) then they can continue being a purely technical resource until retirement if they are really good a
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> he does have to understand he will probably reach a relatively low ceiling of pay
Yes, the Peter Principle applies to programmers and systems administrators as well. It can be resisted: some of us would much rather continue to do our best work in the best field for our skills rather than move "up" to higher authority fields.
Re:Oh my god, you're actually serious??? (Score:5, Informative)
My IT career didn't even *start* until I was 32 or 33, it's 20 years later now... and I'm doing just fine, thanks.
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I also started in IT when I was in my early 30s, about 15 years ago. At the age of 45, I was lucky to find a software development job at a university.Yes, the pay is significantly lower, but I rarely exceed the 35-hour workweek (2-3 times in six years). There is flexibility that allows me to be a single parent that my previous 60-100-hour weeks and insane deadlines never had. I have the respect and cooperation of my peers and superiors. I have the opportunity (not taken yet) to take six university courses (
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Shit's only changed for people that are constantly jumping from job to job. Sounds like subby is one of them (you sound like one too).
For those of us "older" IT professionals that actually stay at one company this isn't an issue at all.
Find a good company that exposes you to the challenges you want, pays well, and has benefits and then stick your ass in the chair and stay there. You'll soon come to realize that yes job security actually does exist.
Re:Oh my god, you're actually serious??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Oh my god, you're actually serious??? (Score:5, Funny)
We don't all do that you insensitive fucktard!
Re: (Score:2)
20 years ago there weren't little shits going around calling people fucktard in public forum back then.
Yes there were. Have you heard of USENET? I was first called a fucktard in a public forum in 1984.
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That was TWENTY YEARS AGO, fucktard. Shit's changed since then, in case you haven't noticed (and considering you're a boomer fucktard, I'm expecting you haven't).
Yeah, shit's changed since then... including the GP's age, which has gone up, so if agism is worse now than 20 years ago, he might have experienced that...
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That was TWENTY YEARS AGO...
Hey, you're pretty smart.
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Old coders don't die - they just migrate to Cobol.
Re: Yes (Score:3)
I'm nearly 44 and I migrated away from COBOL 10 years ago. I don't know where all these mythical COBOL jobs are - I get an email every few months from a recruiter but I get several emails a day for jobs requiring my current skills.
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I'm 50 and still an "in the trenches" programmer. I have no fear about getting a job anywhere I want because I'm good at what I do, and I'm betting I'll be doing this for another 20 or so years. I was in a supervisory (kind of pre-manager) role once and frankly hated that little bit of managing. It's very much like herding cats and that's not what I want to do.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
You're one of the few. Age discrimination and outsourcing are huge. Migrating to management will get twice the pay for half the work given an MBA and a decade of engineering experience.
Half of STEM workers don't find work in their field after graduating.
3/4 of STEM workers leave the field for better areas.
The flood of STEM visas and outsourcing in IT has reduced wages by 1/3.
Still want to stay in the field? You better enjoy what you do and live on a strict budget.
Getting old and I have no problem finding work... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first five years after college are the hardest, many people only want to hire coders with experience. If this is where you are now, stick to it if you love it and things will work out. If you are a 'casual coder' who got into the field because you think that its easy money, quit now.
As the years pass, I am finding no end of people who want to hire senior coders that can work 'full stack' and can manage projects and small teams independently. The money is quite good, and the work almost comes to find you. You have to be willing to work to keep up with tech and keep your skills sharp. The only managers that are making twice what I make are going to be c-level, so I if you want to jump ship to management for better money you had better be really good at it. I can promise you these people are not doing half the work I do though. Pay is usually equitable to responsibility, and they have their fair share of that.
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely.
You'd have to pry the keyboard and mouse from my cold, dead hands. ;)
A catastrophic health problem can change your plans overnight, at any age. Throw in that the older you get, the more likely it is to happen ... and employers can do the math too.
I thought I'd be coding until the week I die. After a couple of years not coding (couldn't use a computer because my retinas were messed up) I'm actually kind of glad that I can't get back into it. The allure of the "high" from "getting into the zone" and doing awesome stuff in marathon coding sessions isn't as attractive as it used to be anyway.
Re: Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I have been fortunate finding a work that values optimal performance for the time worked over just tons of time, but I certainly feel you can have it both ways (software and work-life balance).
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I don't do marathon coding sessions or any of the ridiculous self sacrificing stuff that some seem to think is the norm
This. That's how you stay in the business for more than a few years: do something well and keep doing it and getting better and learning new techniques rather than burn brightly and briefly. I started around age 25; now I'm 52 and in my second decade with the same company. Hotshots who can code circles around me come and go, but I'm dependable and I can maintain 20-year-old code as well as develop new code, and I won't disappear when it gets boring or a headhunter dangles something shiny in front of me.
Missing the point a bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
My point was that a catastrophic health event can take it all away, and that has NOTHING to do with participation in marathon coding sessions by "getting into the zone" or work/life balance.
Unpredictable things happen. You can lose it all in one day, or find out you're soon going to in one doctor's visit, without doing anything "wrong" to contribute to it. It could be from bad genes ("You should have chosen better parents!") or just random chance ("You should have known that car was going to burn the yell
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while you re-skill
"Re-skilling" is not a viable strategy past a certain age. Not only will you end up trying to compete with younger people who actually have experience, but in some cases it's just not physically possible due to the handicaps from the catastrophic health event.
if you're going to accept that 40 is unemployable when retirement is 75 then you have a *massive* social security problem which is not resolved by wishing things were different.
Once an older person (50+) accumulates too many handicaps, they ARE unemployable for all practical purposes. Wishing things were different isn't going to change that. For them, "Freedom 55" means "You're free to drop out of mainline society and be
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Employers take that into account too.
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But what does all that have to do with my main points, which is that a sudden catastrophic change in your health can take it all away, and that becomes more and more likely as you age, and that employers can do the math?
Reminds me of a meeting with a client discussing business continuity. I was in a sling with a broken arm 6 weeks after a motorcycle wreck. Shit happens. Some people plan for it. Some believe it will never happen to them. I do have better insurance than I did at 20...
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The I.T. support jobs I have had over the last 11 years were strictly Monday through Friday with absolutely no overtime. If anyone does overtime, they're not being paid hourly and are exempt from overtime pay.
P.S., I'm 45-years-old.
P.P.S., Youth over experience is complete BS.
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