The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130422020049-8451-the-tech-industry-s-darkest-secret-it-s-all-about-age

by mparramon • 13 years ago

124 119 13 years ago

jasonkester2• 13 years ago

When I was 7 years old, the Big Scary Thing In The Future was cursive writing. Once you hit 2nd grade, teachers were going to start tearing up your homework unless it was written in cursive.

The next year, it was "3rd grade" when teachers would start tearing up non-cursive papers, then 4th, 5th, 6th and "definitely in junior high". But it never happened in reality.

In my 20s, the Big Scary Thing In The Future was ageism in tech. Once you hit 30, you'd never find work again in this industry.

Then it was 35. Then 40.

I've given up listening. Every year, in addition to getting better at what I do, I find that more people want to pay me more money to come program computers for them.

Now it's certainly possible that the real number is 45, and you'll find me living in a cardboard box and begging for nickels at the off-ramp in a few years. But at this point I'm not overly worried about this particular myth.

dave_sid2• 13 years ago

lol

dave_sid2• 13 years ago

I lost 4 points of karma for saying 'lol'. Somebody shoot me now. lol.

k__2• 13 years ago

Well, the positions of developers seem to shift with age.

I am 27 and work as a GUI-dev. My co GUI-devs are 26 and 32 years old.

But the back-end developers are 38, 43 and 56 years old.

The management in here consists of engineers, too. They are all >40 years old.

Most tech-people I know either got in to back-end development or management when they got older.

rubinelli2• 13 years ago

That's an interesting observation, and it matches with my experience, too. Specially in larger teams, the senior developers gravitate towards the back-end, and the 'full-stack developer' is an extremely rare sight.

If I had to guess why it is, I'd say that back-end technologies naturally evolve slower. Yes, we are in the middle of a Big Data boom, but even then, the rate at which Hadoop changes is nowhere near Ruby on Rails, to cite two popular technologies.

ww520• 13 years ago

I might be the weird exception, started in the db/OS/backend, and ended up in web front end and mobile. What I found is that front end is closer to what the business clients see and what they would pay. Business users really can't see and don't care what the backend does as long as it works.

Tactic• 13 years ago

I moved from front end work to back end work for some very simple reasons a) in general it pays better and related b) front end guys are far move common so the backend has less competition.

Work, as I have become older, is more and more just a business proposition.

Plus it puts me further away from those guys that think HTML/CSS is programming. :)

paulbunn• 13 years ago

I totally agree. A lot comes down to the individuals ability to adapt and remain relevant, regardless of age.

michaelochurch9• 13 years ago

I seem to have accelerated my own aging in the sense that my technical prowess and cynicism have grown rapidly in the past 7 years. At 23, I'd never written a professional program in my life. Now, almost 30, I'm probably a 1.8-level engineer. So that's 0.9-1.1 points in 7 years, covering 6 jobs including a failed startup and explosive software failures (none my fault) seen up front and from afar.

My observation is that, as you get older, the jobs available to you get better but they also get rarer. That's partly because you filter out the bad jobs. When someone makes you sign a full-on non-compete to take a coding test-- not just an NDA covering the material in the test, but the works-- you just don't return the email. Anyway, what it means is that when you do get a job, you're more likely to find quality, but you can no longer count on a new job in 2 weeks if your existing one ends, especially because after 35+ you are going to be sized up for some kind of leadership potential, making fit demands very high.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

"My observation is that, as you get older, the jobs available to you get better but they also get rarer."

Very true. I think this also comes from specialization. You get better at solving interesting and difficult problems, but more in your niche. The jobs are less about, "They are smart, we can pay something decent while they learn" and more "This is the only person for the job." It's also why fit becomes more important later in one's career.

ericb• 13 years ago

> you filter out the bad jobs.

True. I'm much less willing to be paid partly in startup monopoly money now...

Intermernet3• 13 years ago

The two best programmers I've met were over 50.

In my personal experience (I'm 36) I get better with every line of code I write. I'm a far better programmer now than I was 10 years ago.

el_fuser2• 13 years ago

While your anecdotal evidence is endearing, it is at odds with the actual data that researchers have compiled. Which the article briefly mentions.

jasonkester2• 13 years ago

But it's not. The only data cited in the article showed that "salary increases slowed" as engineers (in the semiconductor industry) grew older.

Stated more clearly: "Once you get to a comfortable multi-six-figure salary, you'll find you don't get spectacular percentage increases quite as often." That seems applicable to any field anywhere.

The article correctly states that an older guy is likely to be making three times as much as a new grad, while incorrectly assuming that he's still only capable of using the technology he learned 20 years hence.

So, no. The fact that the author couldn't actually come up with any statistics implying that being old is actually a bad thing, despite combing the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census for data, seems to be a good indicator that there's nothing to worry about.

compay• 13 years ago

So far my experience has been exactly the same as what you describe. I just turned 40 and recently got the highest paying job I've ever had - writing code full time. I'm cautiously optimistic we can keep this up indefinitely.

rayiner• 13 years ago

The key to longevity in engineering is: 1) develop an expertise; 2) develop management skills.

I know lots of guys working as engineers in their 50's. People hire them, because they have an expertise. Not a niche just by virtue of being old (like COBOL) but a problem domain they know inside and out. Nobody is tossing out their 45 year old engineer that works on carrier grade network software in favor of a fresh graduate.

ryanSrich• 13 years ago

> develop an expertise.

This. It's the same way in the high profile freelance game. Those that have a specific knowledge, most often, can charge higher, often ridiculous, rates. It doesn't even have to be languages or frameworks. It could be implementing large scale ecommerce solution with Magento. Companies that need that level of focus are willing to pay.

el_fuser2• 13 years ago

Your anecdotal evidence counters research data, and hn votes it to the top. How cute.

OGinparadise2• 13 years ago

I wish you the best but your experience doesn't mean much and doesn't prove or disprove anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Can you imagine Bill Gates, in college or no college debate, writing about quitting college, listing his milestones and then fast-forward to $60+ billion in net-worth.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

This is another in a seemingly endless stream of "old people can't cut it in the coding world" articles. My intent isn't to trash the author or the piece, it's just that we've been over this ground and I am going to be brief.

The truth, as always, is nuanced. As the author says, it's up or out. If you're 50 and expect to do be doing the same type of work you did when you're 25, you're mistaken. As programmers we have to constantly be adapting.

The problem here is getting into any kind of attitude that says that you can coast. There is no coasting. Not in this business. If you're not constantly reading and trying out new things, your salary is headed down.

zimpenfish4• 13 years ago

I've experienced many distinctly average coasters who have gone upwards quickly. It ain't a meritocracy; being able to politick and play the game is just as important, sadly.

michaelochurch9• 13 years ago

Here's my stance on the problem. Most people here have heard of the MacLeod hierarchy (Losers, Clueless, Sociopaths). The VC-istan cult is about Cluelessness. (The MacLeod Sociopaths are the investors and executive implants who live outside companies and, smartly, get to diversify.) The whole ecosystem is built up around extracting value from young, white men who have a high proclivity toward Cluelessness.

When you're in school, deadlines are well-tested because everyone's doing approximately the same work. Unless you have a health crisis or death in the family, you don't have an excuse for a late assignment and the typical 10%/day policy is more than generous. When you're at work, though, 90% of "deadlines" are just someone's opinion and a good 50% are impossible. VC-istan is about exploiting young kids who haven't learned that yet and who would rather stay at work till 3:45 am than miss a "deadline" set by some VP with Shit's Easy Syndrome. See: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

The older programmers are really good at what they do, and they're a lot more flexible than the stereotype gives them credit for. The problem, however, is that they're a threat to the cult. Bring someone on board who does his best work between 8 and 11 (when the kids are just starting to roll in) and goes home at 5:30, ignores the deadlines that don't actually matter (i.e. the ones set by egotistical bosses, not hard deadlines that must be met if at all possible) and suddenly there's a breakdown of the Cluelessness. Couple this also with the Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse; the Clueless young people don't see that the older guy is 4x more efficient than they are (because they're inefficient and don't know it, cf. D-K). All they see is a guy putting in significantly fewer hours. Either the young Clueless will see him as a piker for his shorter work hours, or as a badass for his high effectiveness (making him a legitimacy threat, as the younger engineers see him as the real alpha).

I would also add that there's a culture of extremely harsh age-grading. VC-istan is most concentrated in high-COL areas where you can't raise a family on a (non-financial) programmer's salary; at two you can do it, but two career jobs, plus kids, necessitates maids and daycare and that's expensive and complicated, too. Because the only way to own a house in these cities is to become an executive or financier, you have a lot of 22-year-olds who see themselves being executives-who-code in 5 (!) years-- having managerial control of the division of labor and using it to give themselves the fun stuff, but being full-time programmers-- never mind the fact that that's extremely impractical in almost every organization. Very rarely do executives spend less than 20 hours per week in meetings. A 40-year-old who's been around the block and still programs might tell them as much. That's a problem. To counteract this, the 35-year-old VCs and 30-year-old founders discredit the 40-year-old programmers as "bitter" and he reacts by leaving, just after the one-year cliff so as to take a couple lottery tickets out the door with him because, well, strange things happen.

The short way to say this is that older programmers aren't the problem. The issue is that most of these formulaic startups are founded on exploiting young talent that overestimates the career value of low-end engineering work (because these people don't have the experience to tell what quality work is) and most older people can see through the bullshit. That's dangerous, insofar as it represents the threat of the younger Clueless engineers also learning to see.

arethuza• 13 years ago

"If it's easy to imagine, then it's easy to implement."

I once worked for a CEO and 90% owner of a startup who did very well for himself ($30 million exit - which he got almost all of as he hadn't taken any external funding) even though he really believed this. As far as I could tell he wasn't pretending - he really believed that any feature (no matter how complex and we were working in a very complex area) could be implemented in a week. As I was VPEng this perplexed me greatly - particularly as there was a conspicuous track record of features not being implemented in the times before I arrived.

My only explanation was that his attention span was about a week - if he asked for something and it appeared in a week it was great. If not he forgot about it....

[NB This CEO was a very bright guy - and I had a lot of respect for him].

joscas• 13 years ago

A certain one week feature I planned has taken 3,5 years and still is ongoing. Despite I believe no feature should be planned that takes more than one week. Agile development I think this is called.

legutierr• 13 years ago

What I'm curious to understand is, are you at a competitive disadvantage if you don't follow this strategy? Or is it the case that a company structured around sane hours employing older, more experienced workers will be more effective, all else being equal?

In other words, is this pattern followed because it works, or is it just a cultural artifact that these companies would do best to abandon (but maybe can't for whatever reason)?

michaelochurch9• 13 years ago

It depends on what kind of company you're trying to build. If you have short-attention-span investors who want to see shiny shit every 2 weeks, and you're trying to force yourself into a B2C red ocean, then you may want the 90-hour-per-week plug-em-burn-em-dump-em Clueless young programmers. Remember that most of VC-istan right now is social media, and most of that is marketing experimentation that happens to use technology, but not technology itself.

If you're trying to build Real Technology and you don't have a few 10+ year programmers, you're probably fucked. Different game altogether. Unfortunately, it's hard to get money for Real Technology because the payoff happens in the longer term. Most Real Technology companies make most of their money by consulting.

lsc5• 13 years ago

The problem with families is a real one. If you choose to have a family, well, you are going to have a lot less time and energy to put into your career. It's as bad as a MMPOG addiction; worse, probably, most people don't have the guts to ask for time off for a raid.

But, I don't think that has a lot to do with what we see as age discrimination; It does give the young kids a boost, but most people start families in their mid to late '20s, and even in the computer industry, that's young. By the time you are hitting 50 and seeing real age discrimination? your kids are almost taking care of themselves. (or, at least, they are leeching money, not time.)

michaelochurch9• 13 years ago

In VC-istan and on Wall Street, you see age discrimination sooner. Then again, that may have to do with extreme costs of living and mediocre quality of life pushing a lot of people out as they get into their family-building years. But my observation has been that age discrimination starts in the late 20s, although it doesn't become a show-stopper (only an annoyance) till much later.

It's not about absolute age. It's about harsh age grading. If you're 37 and VP/Eng, you're fine. If you haven't held a management position by that age, it starts to raise questions (even if you have no desire to manage). Hell, even at 26 you're out of the running for analyst-level positions in banking; you better have something that shows you're associate-level (a graduate degree or strong technical accomplishments).

I'm 29 and already experiencing age discrimination. I'm losing callbacks because I have "too many jobs" (which is basically a legal, back-door age discrimination although it's about the cynicism and "disruptive" expertise that come with "job hopping", not chronological years). Now, any place that has that attitude is a shitty place to work, but sometimes shitty jobs are useful and it's a loss (not a major one, but it affects leverage and financial planning) not to have them as options.

ralphc• 13 years ago

By the time you hit 50 you're taking care of aging parents. This can be worse than kids if they live somewhere else.

Throwadev2• 13 years ago

All of this... so true. Spot on. I'm seeing the same thing now. I'm in my early 30's and the younger developers we're hiring are doing all the shit work, and they are freaking out about following the rules and doing everything on deadlines. I've had the exact same realization about the deadlines being arbitrary, and ever since I realized the engineering talent gets to set the deadlines, I ignore most of what's dictated to me and I set them back. The management at my company can't do much about it because regardless of how long it takes, the work I do is the important technology work in the company and none of the other developers could do it (not now at least, maybe in a few years).

There was a bullshit fake article written by someone at facebook this week, some tongue in cheek thing about how awesome it is to work at facebook as a developer. Reading it made me sick, and right here you have articulated exactly why.

wging• 13 years ago

this? http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-exec-10-things-i-hat...

josefresco• 13 years ago

Investing in youth is not much different than in professional sporting. You want (as an investor and employer) a young guy/gal who has major potential and years to produce.

One difference is that athletes tend to compete well physically only when young (depending on the sport obviously) whereas in tech you can still peck that keyboard when you're past your physical prime.

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

"The young understand new technologies better than the old do"

No they don't. The young, smart developers who already have strong backgrounds adopt new technologies, the old, smart developers do the same.

"The young can easily pull all-nighters."

Sure they can, and companies should be moving away from that as the code quality does drop off past hour 12 unless they're a super talented developer. In which case they're probably smart enough to know not to work an all nighter.

If you're not willing to pay $150k for a great developer that's going to get shit done, you're fucked already.

eitally• 13 years ago

Where "$150k" depends entirely on location.... It's not necessary to spend nearly that much unless you're in one of very few tech hot spots that also has a very high CoL.

michaelochurch9• 13 years ago

companies should be moving away from that as the code quality does drop off past hour 12 unless they're a super talented developer.

    s/12/7/g
    s/unless they're a super talented developer//g

Dirty secret about coding. You're typically at your best doing 3-5 hours per day of actual programming. If you're doing 6-8 hours, split that with a workout. The other working time should be spent on design, exchange of ideas, and learning new stuff.

If you use a high-productivity language like Clojure or Haskell and work on a green field, you'll find that you can't program for 12 hours straight, because there's no fat in the development process. Your brain starts to hurt after 8-9 hours. Personally, I can get useful work done for about 11 hours per day (I seem to average 65-70 hours per week, including writing which has taken a lot of my time recently, no matter what my mode of employment) but there is no way I'd be able to write code for 77 hours per week. Maybe 55 if I really had to push.

If you're not willing to pay $150k for a great developer that's going to get shit done, you're fucked already.

My first programming job paid just over half of that (well, with a sizeable bonus, but 3x higher than the "top of range") and I got shit done. Cost-of-living is also a factor. I would probably build in Austin or Boston (it annoys me that those cities' names rhyme because they happen to be the top 2 candidates for the 2018 tech hub, as I see it) where the brains-to-dollars ratio is more favorable than New York's. (New York has plenty of brains; the dollars are a problem. Fucking rent.)

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

I'll agree with your swap outs as a general rule, but I'd say code quality drops from 'not so great' to 'you shouldn't be pressing build' after 12 hours. Up until then you might get something done.

The last part is mostly about employers not willing to pony up for developers who know what they're doing inside out, and are willing to sit down and get it done and go home. I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll work for significantly less and get the job done as well.

fatman• 13 years ago

Maybe endurance is a separate ability. Some folks can operate at a high level for extended periods of time, though their highest level may be below the peak output of others. I will say I have no quibble with your numbers as averages. To find someone who possess both skill and endurance is exceedingly rare.

scrozier• 13 years ago

Precisely. I am 55 and very current. Many of my younger friends ask me about new technology. I'm actually past having kids at home, so tend to work pretty long hours...because I like what I do.

I have a lot of entrepreneurial experience and am a pretty good general business manager. Coupled with the ability to code, I find that I am in fairly great demand.

nicholassmith3• 13 years ago

Exactly, smart companies hire the right person for the role, not on the basis that they're 19 and willing to work for no money over 18 hours a day.

tuxidomasx• 13 years ago

After talking with a few high school teachers, and considering my own experiences with those at the college level, I believe that today's entry-level engineer is comparably equal to (if not a step below) the previous generation's entry-level engineer in terms of programming ability.

If this is true, and the trend continues, then any ageism based on aptitude could reach a point of diminishing returns very soon.

I would also challenge the idea from the article that "the young understand new technologies better than the old do." Which I think is less true today than it was a few decades ago.

I believe this apparent ageism is a result of pattern matching and cost cutting moreso than a widely held belief that young engineers can outperform more experienced ones.

lsc5• 13 years ago

But that's the thing. I know some old people (Old, here, is half a decade or better.) who are still purely technical, but the ones I know that are fully employed are really good. I mean, not just "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive" good, but better than I would be if I had two lifetimes to practice. And they generally don't job hop like the youngsters, either, a sign of fear of joblessness. (I mean, that's all anecdotal, but eh, for most of us, that's what we use to sanity-check the statistical data)

My anecdotal data lines up with the statistical data.

There is this perception that you can take a young person and train them fairly easily; that this is the thing to do. I think with someone older? it's not so much that hiring managers don't think they can be trained as that it's /weird/ on a cultural level, for a 25 year old kid to tutor some 50 year old. Really, I think that's a big part of the problem.

Now, I think the other side of that coin is that for most of us? we hit our 30s, those raises start slowing down, and we start looking for other giant gains.

I mean, through my teens and twenties, a year without a 20% raise was a disappointment. And if anything, the raises lagged increases in my actual effectiveness. In my late 20s, and early 30s? that slows down a lot. I'm looking around for that next productivity jump, and hey, turns out all those social skills I didn't have when I was younger? I am not saying I'm smooth or anything, but hey, I'm a hell of a lot better than I was. It looks to me like there is some low-hanging fruit (productivity wise) in management.

So that's the other side of the coin; Most of us? a decade or two into our careers, well, we start looking at management. That explains some of the fall-offs in Individual Contributor pay; Many of those who can, make a run for management, and many who are left behind are seen as "not making the cut" (which is kindof silly, considering the different skillsets required)

OGinparadise2• 13 years ago

Shut up you old programmers with families and tendencies to questions 80 hour weeks in 15 year old 'startups' with tens of billions in revenue. Or Zuckenberg, Larry Page and others will replace you with fresh of the boat young immigrants...because "we don't have enough engineers." Or something like that http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/11/mark-zuckerberg-...

jgrahamc• 13 years ago

Welcome to a recycled three-year-old TechCrunch article: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-valley’s-dark-secre...

Now here's the key claim: "increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. "

Two points:

1. Would we expect a linear increase in salary with age? I would not. At some point the salary would likely 'top out' in any job.

2. The part about over 50s ignores a very important fact from the study: the over 50s work less (and therefore earn less). To quote the book: "Workers over the age of 50 are much more likely to work less than a full year [...]. One in six engineers aged 51 to 65 reported being paid for less than a full year of work in 2005 [...]". The book goes on to make a confusing claim about whether that's voluntary or not (jumping to the 2002 downturn and talking about interviews with engineers but with no data).

danmaz742• 13 years ago

I think that the real anomaly is that many people really expect salaries to always go up with age. Which, especially now that people work well in their sixties, doesn't make much sense, except for some very rare exceptions.

EternalFury• 13 years ago

Minor point...there is this thing called "inflation". It's real. If your salary doesn't go up every year by at least 1-3%, your buying power gets lower and you are effectively getting poorer.

TheCoelacanth• 13 years ago

With regard to point 1, I suspect older workers are also less willing to switch jobs, which would also make it harder to increase their salaries.

henrik_w• 13 years ago

Basically the same article (s/Silicon Valley's Dark/The Tech Industry's Darkest/) from 2 years ago, discussed here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641763

pxlpshr• 13 years ago

The consumer web is often a culture of 'pop hits' and lots of media; hence the justin bieber-esque love affair the Valley has for said entrepreneurs. So, yes -- I do believe that people in their 20-30's are better at identifying these fads moreso than 40-50. But they're just fads, and fads usually die fast like the startups born from them. Certainly not all, but most.

That said, I also believe the consumer web is in for some pain (the notorious A crunch). I get the impression a lot of unqualified 'super angels' felt it was more important that entrepreneurs become professional money raisers and media darlings, rather than help them focus on their core business.

When it comes down to it, if you're a seasoned entrepreneur with repeat successes – you'll be unstoppable for the rest of your life. The Biebers of startups are edge cases that simply get a lot of attention because it compliments media's goal for driving pageviews.

coldcode• 13 years ago

I still find success despite being 55:

http://thecodist.com/article/yes_i_still_want_to_be_doing_th...

lunchladydoris• 13 years ago

Articles like this terrify me. I'm in my late 30s and I'm only now realizing that what I want to do is code.

I'm a wet biologist by training and have been doing research and associated work for a decade. I have little opportunity to code at my current job. What I'm hoping to do is to formalize and hone my programming skills through some additional university courses.

Am I wasting my time? Am I forever going to be kicked to the bottom of the pile of applicants for junior positions because I've already had a career?

If you've been in a similar situation, I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.

jaimebuelta• 13 years ago

Let me tell a little about what happens to me. After 4 years in my first job programming, I got burned about it, so I changed to be a consultant for a year and having my own non-tech business (a shop) for two. Then I came back to programming, after being for three years (late twenties) without doing programming stuff... And it was a successful comeback, as I got back with passion, and learned a lot in a few amount of time, so I really catch up, in terms of career, with friends that started at the same time, and never quit programming.

The great thing about coding is that you can show how good (or bad) you are relatively easy (compared with other fields). There is also a real shortage of coders right now. If you are good, and you like to code, you can catch up and stand up over a lot of people that has been doing one year, ten times.

I'd say that one thing you can to do is show up your code (through open source, etc), extra bonus points if you do something that is useful, and whenever someone asks you you can say: "Do you know X? I did that" ;-)

pramodliv12• 13 years ago

Isn't writing code for your research in biology the most obvious solution?

sjg007• 13 years ago

nah, just code in a biotech or for lab software. There is so much opportunity. Automate through code/robotics your job. Plenty of opportunities.

You will find companies that want a mix of wet lab and coder skills. You save them on the translation costs for making software the biologists actually need.

smartician• 13 years ago

In my view, it's not ageism that's the problem. It's the questionable paradigm of the annual raise. Over the course of the years, a developer's salary will increase steadily, and make her more and more expensive and less competitive against less experienced developers.

If you're willing to take a junior dev position for junior dev pay, I would think that in general you won't be disadvantaged because it's your second career.

noname123• 13 years ago

Not in a similar situation, I'm in my late 20's, a programmer who have done Bioinformatics research in academia and in Pharma R&D.

Programming done in most startup's and corporate settings are very similar to lab-work. The young grad students are lured by PI's to do repetitive work with promise of publication when the reality is it's a lottery. After a few years, what is looked upon as glamorous and interesting by onlookers of the high-end instruments and high-impact research, will turn into mundane and repetitive lab protocols that's intellectually stale and unstimulating; any results and interpretation is only esoteric and vague in the academic sense.

The actors are different but the characters are the same. PCRs, blots will be replaced with repetitive coding exercises being asked of you by project managers. PIs will be replaced by MBA bosses. The academic grind for glory amongst the sub-field of 5 people will be replaced by maximizing profit in the business logic of the sub-field of the company you are in.

The pay is slightly better or equivalent; the job security much worse. People threw around the 150K mark here as an average developer salary. It's analogous to say that the average lawyer makes 220K. It's not true. After working for about 5 years in Boston, most of my peers are getting salaries around the range of 90-110K. Only people I know who are getting over 150K at programmer level live in SF which in their case is not very much. Most software engineering job req's I looked for in Boston tops out at 150K, this includes senior positions for 10-15 years of experience and at well-funded companies.

If your goal is to achieve intellectual autonomy and financial independence by becoming a programmer, it's very difficult. The sub-culture on this forum skewers towards college students and recent grads who are more naive about the field. Others might give more defensive answers to your query, but I want to give you a honest opinion.

I chose coding over Biology because it was attractive for a young person out of school and didn't want to get on the grad school treadmill. But if I inherited a lot of money suddenly, I'd want to apply to Biology grad school and do research for fun, without caring about my PI and departmental politics; and/or work on open-source games without caring about IT career jockeying or monetization. Just food for thought.

ecopoesis• 13 years ago

My wife and I were talking about this a couple weeks ago. We're both developers, and have both been working for 12 years at a variety of companies, large and small, yet neither of us has ever had a colleague who retired.

This article confirms what I suspected, older programmers don't retire, they just never get rehired after the latest round of layoffs.

tosseraccount• 13 years ago

Looks like it' time to retire the 40 year olds. It's looking like we're going to quadruple the number of H-1Bs in the Rubio/Shumer/McCain bill.

(Source , National Public Radio ... http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... )

What H-1B Employers Say

NPR repeatedly tried to interview the biggest H-1B users, but none agreed to talk.

No one is talking be we all know what's going down.

nikomen• 13 years ago

Problems like this will never get fixed. Too many Americans are too concerned with watching American Idol to pay attention to the fact that most politicians (on either side of the fence) are trying their best to destroy the middle class by padding the pockets of business executives and high net worth investors. Citizens United, H-1B visas, and many other examples show this.

Thanks for posting this, tosseraccount.

nohuck13• 13 years ago

Here is the ginourmous confounding issue the presentation in the article: > Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000?

(my emphasis)

So how do you untangle the ageism issue from the skills issue? This article doesn't, but for the broader question you kinda have to.

How do you control for skills when finding out about ageism?

I'm pretty sure there's ageism in tech. This makes me a little scared. It's this exogenous thing that I can't control.

I'm pretty sure skills-decay is at least as common as ageism. Skills have market prices. They change.

This reminds me of a (PG?) essay that said essentially, if you're gonna call yourself a developer, don't call yourself an [X] developer, because you are not the language [X]. I suspect it's all the [X] developers out there who are seeing the most "ageism"

But they what do I know, I'm in my 20s.

[edit: typos]

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Previous submission of canonical URL:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588058

One of the comments there sums up the issue: "It's hardly a secret."

gbin• 13 years ago

I have a silly remark to make about this article... Isn't it also because current programmers in their 50's have basically less programming experience than the ones in their 30's ? I had one of the first usable family computer when I was 6 and I am already in my late 30's, if you have let's say 20 more years of experience than me, on what computer did you have them ? My bet is that it is a picture of what we have now and not a tendency.

obviouslygreen• 13 years ago

While I can see how this is a problem or potential problem for a lot of people... our "darkest secret?" Really? We don't have any issues that are larger than "after your 30's you'll have to work harder?" Our biggest problem, as stated, is that we can only expect to pull down six figures for a few years?

This seems to me a serious overstatement and more than a bit of "we're out of things to write about, let's make this one seem more shocking and hidden than it is" sensationalism.

justinhj• 13 years ago

The article suggests you can teach everything a $150k programmer knows to a fresh grad $60k programmer. Damn I want to know about these training techniques. It's usually 5-10 years depending on domain.

jdminhbg• 13 years ago

Here is where this awful article's bait-and-switch happens:

> Brown and Linden’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census data for the semiconductor industry revealed that although salaries increased dramatically for engineers in their 30s, these increases slowed after the age of 40. After 50, the mean salary fell by 17% for those with bachelors degrees and by 14% for those with masters degrees and Ph.Ds. And salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even Ph.D degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection).

> It’s the same in the software industry. Prominent Silicon Valley investors often talk about youth being an advantage in entrepreneurship. If you look at their investment portfolios, all you see are engineers who are hardly old enough to shave. They rarely invest in people who are old.

The first paragraph, which contains the data that gives the veneer of respectability, is about the semiconductor industry. Even then, salaries don't actually decrease until people hit the beginning of retirement age (surprise!).

In the second paragraph, we switch to the software industry, where it's "the same" (no data to support that, natch). The supporting anecdote isn't even about employees, but investees... What proportion of people receiving money in the software industry do so via investment rather than a paycheck?

Of course the specter of ageism haunts everyone, so the linkbait is effective and we have 60+ comments here.

codex4• 13 years ago

The HN reaction to ageism is interesting--the comments are extremely skeptical, but of course, HN suffers from survivor bias. Those who wash out of software development in their 30s and 40s don't read or comment on HN. In fact, wasting time on social news sites is a young person's game even if ageism were not a factor.

zimpenfish4• 13 years ago

Hey, I resent that remark. I'm wasting plenty of time on social news sites and I haven't been young for decades.

codex4• 13 years ago

Perhaps HN is what's keeping you young at heart!

codex4• 13 years ago

My own impression of the tech industry are that young programmers are like stem cells--stick them anywhere and they'll differentiate into what they need to be. However, mature, differentiated developers often find it very hard to adapt to the second, third, or fourth new wave of tech. companies--both culturally and technically.

voidlogic2• 13 years ago

I don't think this is a true, learning new tech is skill. Back when I was an undergrad there was a class that basically switched languages once a week after each homework assignment and every 2-3 weeks it switched paradigm (procedural, OO, functional, logic/declarative, etc). The idea was that the tech being used doesn't matter, just the understanding of the theory and the skill to learn new tech. Anecdotally, every time I switch tech now as a professional, I feel I get better at it, faster. Learning itself is a skill to be learned.

codex4• 13 years ago

I think that for the majority of people, neuroplasticity decreases with age, which is attributed to a decline in physiology [1]. I think your personal experiences can be explained be fact that learning a new technology does not really involve a lot of change; much technology shares the same underpinnings.

[1] "However, there is an obstacle to learning in mature age: the mental decline related to the deterioration of brain function, which is determined in the later stage of life. When the age increases, the ability to generate new synapses between neurons in response to external stimuli declines; this ability is the basis of fundamental and complex functions like memory and learning. The brain ageing causes various changes: reduction in brain volume and gray matter in particular, progressive atrophy of neurons and their interconnections, degeneration of cortical regions governing the functions of sensation, cognition, memory and motor control, metabolic decline of key neurons and loss of features related to physical and chemical deterioraion (OECD, 2007).The acquiring of new knowledge and skills becomes therefore more and more diffcult, and the execution of complex tasks requires more effort than the younger learners.

[1] http://www.academia.edu/2039409/The_Ageing_Brain_Neuroplasti...

saintx• 13 years ago

The biggest difference from when I was a starving 19 year-old is that I don't need to use recruiters to find work anymore. It's strange that this article comes from LinkedIn and it does not mention the power of having connections. My hope is that by lifting up the people around me wherever I go, I'll build up a larger, better, and more enthusiastic network of colleagues whose help I can draw on later.

krsgoss• 13 years ago

I worked with a talented C++ programmer who had flown airplanes in the Pacific Theatre in WWII. I don't think he necessarily needed the money as much as just enjoyed the job but it goes to show that you can still write code when you're older. We always enjoyed taking him out to lunch on Veteran's day too!

rwhitman• 13 years ago

The more I think about this the less I think its painting an accurate picture.

Sure startups may not hire older engineers to work at the front of the application stack, but as engineers age they tend to either start specializing in an area, moving deeper into the stack or move into leadership roles and the types of companies that have specific needs in those areas tend to be larger and more established.

eeeeaaii• 13 years ago

I hear this over and over again and I wonder why nobody frames this as a generational thing. The Apple II came out in 1977. I'm 41 now, so back then I was 8, still learning how to think, how to process the world. I wrote my first computer program in 6th grade -- I grew up with computers. But somebody who is 51 now was 18 when the Apple II came out, already well into their teenage years, and probably already thinking about what they wanted to do with their life. Unless their parents were scientists or researchers there was very little chance they had ever seen or laid hands on a computer.

One thing I fear is that there's a rise and fall to this. In other words, the fear is that younger generations are just not as interested in computers anymore... in other words, the past 20-30 years or so has been a "golden age" for computers that is slowly coming to an end. Data bears this out: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/03/21/computer_sci...

Let's look at popular music. Baby boomers grew up listening to records and the radio, and in their run they made some amazing music. It was an exciting time to be in a band, everyone was doing it, and some really great music was made. Back then, they said "if it's too loud, you're too old." Everybody talked about youth then.

What happened? People kept on believing that rock and roll was for the young, and there were more and more ways to access music and the technology for making music got better and better, but the reality was that the music itself just got worse and worse. The moment was over -- the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution and womens’ movement, the civil rights movement -- it was all in the past, and kids in the 80's, 90's etc. just had nothing to write songs about anymore, and (very much generalizing here) nobody practiced their instruments anymore because -- why? It was all about getting that record deal and getting famous. The more you unpack it, the more dismal it appears. Those great hits you remember from the 80's, 90's, etc? Look more deeply into it and you'll find in many, many cases there were baby boomers advising, producing, writing, performing -- basically still running the show. These days, popular music is a shell of its former self. Which isn't to say that there's isn't good music being made. But the quantity and the quality of the music just isn't what it was.

There have been plenty of other "golden ages" throughout history, in the arts, philosophy, literature, architecture, etc, etc. It's reasonable to assume that there will continue to be “golden ages” with regard to more modern pursuits, such as rock music and computer programming. Who knows how long programming’s first “golden age” will last? Maybe it’s just getting started, maybe it's coming to an end, or maybe it’s already ended. Regardless though, it's probably safe to say that someone who is currently in their 50's pre-dates programming’s first "golden age" and probably doesn't parse the world the same way as somebody who grew up in the thick of things. Which doesn’t actually mean that someone in their 50’s can’t be a good programmer, by the way, it’s a generalization, not an absolute.

These days, when I come on hacker news and I see another yet another article about a completely boring social-media who-cares php-based startup with kids at the helm, when I see how weak Facebook is as a technical platform (28 year old CEO) especially when compared with Google (40 year old CEO), when I see how much kids these days rely on bolting shit together and copying and pasting code without even knowing how that stuff works, it makes me fear for programming. Again, I’m generalizing, there are plenty of good programmers under 25, and plenty of good programmers over 40, please don’t take offense if you’re outside of that age range. My worry is not that good, young programmers don’t exist, my worry is that their numbers are decreasing.

Someone• 13 years ago

Minor correction: 51 year olds were 15 when the Apple ][ came out, not 18.

And they had seen computers, just not personal computers. Exhibits showing line printers printing ASCII (or, more likely, EBCDIC) art were fairly common views. Any technically inclined kid in a rich country would have seen one (touching is something else)

Also, I don't think we have fewer good low-level programmers; they just get lost in a sea of glue-blocks-together experts (that, by the way, has its place, too)

fghh45sdfhr3• 13 years ago

Darkest Secret? More like an open secret. It has not yet affected me, as I am quite old enough yet. But I have seen in in large corporations. It's bad management, very sad, and would be almost impossible to prove in a law suit.

It's also why I will definitely try to transition to either entrepreneurship or contracting before I hit 40.

neovive• 13 years ago

It comes down the needs of the employer. Since technology evolves so quickly, it's hard to find someone with many years experience in trendy languages. Experienced developers bring additional soft skills that are hard to quantify and hiring staff often have no idea they even need them until after the fact. It's easy to just think this guy is willing to do the same for half the price.

More experienced developers bring additional soft

justin_vanw• 13 years ago

Right off the top of my head I can come up with all sorts of factors that are totally neglected in this article, for example:

Survivor Bias: the best and brightest get promoted. This reduces the average 'quality' of the remaining people in the original pool, even though none of the people changed in any way.

Lets say you have a team of engineers, and 5 of them just turned 40. One of those over the hill engineers just got promoted to be a VP, and another one leaves to be an independent consultant. Don't you think the two that left the team were probably among the best in those 5, and therefore were more highly paid than the other 3? The average salary of your 40 year old engineers just went down, even though the average salary of the original 5 likely went up by more than 300%.

nsxwolf• 13 years ago

"Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead."

$60,000 (in the Valley?) + A whole month of training = I had to stop reading the article

wanttoknow• 13 years ago

Anyone know if Brown and Linden actually agree with this guy or is he just soiling their reputation by twisting their research?

graycat• 13 years ago

I've never lived in a wealthy neighborhood but have always lived in at least nice neighborhoods. In each of those neighborhoods, if look around, see that the most common job that supports the families is being the head, often a sole proprietor, of a small or medium business. For the point of the article, these small business heads have a big advantage: Their age doesn't matter as long as they can keep doing the work or at least keep doing well managing the work.

Yes, there are reports of major companies who hire Bachelor's and Master's degree engineers and by age 35 want them into management or out the door. So, maybe 1 in 100 stays around for a full career. So, at age 18 there is Joe and Sam. Joe goes to college and graduate school in engineering, joins the big company, and is out the door at age 35. Sam did some yard work in high school and just continues. Soon he has six trucks and 12 guys working for him. He has a house and a family, and his wife helps with scheduling, billing, and customer service. As long as the grass keeps growing, he's okay. He's expanding into lawn service for higher end clients, e.g., banks, medical office campuses, etc. He's planning to expand into landscape architecture with a plant nursery. So at age 35, Joe is out of work and Sam is doing much better.

Sam has a neighbor Pete who is an electrician. He doesn't bother to put his name in the Yellow Pages; he doesn't have a Web site; actually he does nothing on publicity. But he still gets plenty of calls, has a house, family, truck, and an apprentice. Roger got a Ph.D. in electronic engineering, worked for the big company, got fired at age 35, and wishes he could swap his Ph.D. for an electrician's license.

Kelly's father ran a small grocery store with two gas pumps out front. Now Kelly runs 10 gas stations with convenience stores, has a 50' yacht, a summer place on the water, a winter place in the mountains, and is paying full tuition for his children at private high schools and colleges. At his yacht club he notices a lot of small business guys like himself but nearly no technical employees or venture funded entrepreneurs.

More generally, a career should last 40+ years. Okay, look around: What big companies have ever provided such long lasting careers? How commonly? E.g., IBM? Okay, near 1994 they lost $16 billion and went from 407,000 employees down to 205,000. A LOT of careers got ended way before 40 years. So, at IBM, if joined in 1954 then had a chance of getting in 40 years. Much before 1954, IBM didn't look so good. So, really, for revered IBM, really had to join in the early 1950s -- that was about the only chance. Much the same for GM, GE, AT&T, etc.

Lesson 1: For a 40+ year career with one big company, mostly just f'get about it. Maybe can pull that off in K-12 teaching, college teaching if can get tenure, or working for state or the federal government.

Lesson 2: A huge fraction of the people with stable careers for 40+ years head their own small businesses.

Okay, for hackers and HN, we have:

Lesson 3: By age 35 or so, likely gotta be running your own business. Just grind that into your planning. For 'information technology', maybe it can be a great advantage. Still have to be running your own business.

Competition, how to handle competition? How do the people in the houses on the nice streets do it? Sure, they nearly all take great advantage of a geographical barrier to entry. Since nearly no one drives over 50 miles to see a dentist, be one of the best dentists in a radius of 50 miles and do well. Same for being an electrician, running a lawn service, remodeling kitchens and baths, auto repair, auto body repair, independent insurance agent, manufacturer's representative, etc.

So, hackers should plan to do an 'information technology' startup. If it does as well as a successful electrician, okay. As well as a guy with 10 gas stations and convenience stores, still better. As well as Google, terrific. Still, can't much hope to do well just working for a salary.

Alternatives? Sure, there can be many. Maybe will get founder's stock in a successful startup.

Still, look up and down the nice residential streets and see a lot of guys running their own businesses. So, do much the same except use information technology as an advantage.

For the article, it goes on and on about the 'reasons' a guy 50 can't get a job programming -- he asks for too much money, his skills are out of date, etc. The "too much money" is no reason to be unemployable; the fact is, he won't be hired at anything much above minimum wage. Skills? His 'skills' may be far superior, and for being 'up to date' with the latest version of some language, that's as easy or easier for an experienced guy than a young guy.

But there is another reason: The supervisor is supposed to be older, and the subordinate, younger. So, a guy 50 has to work for a guy 60 and can't work for a guy 40.

There's just no way out of it: In the US, big corporations as sources of careers are going away -- have heavily gone away. Maybe if the US would get back on its feet, e.g., quit being so happy about creating economic booms in distant countries, big companies could be stable enough to provide good, long term employment. Maybe. So, right, notice that one of the keys is to have a good geographical barrier to entry, that is, no competition from distant countries. So, basically the US is losing out on competing around the world so that what's left are lots of small businesses each of which serves customers in a radius of about 50 miles. Sad situation.

There is another observation: Supposedly the 1-2 wealthiest areas in the US are Silicon Valley and Greenwich, CT (with the hedge funds). Well, third is within about 60 miles of the Washington Monument. Because the Federal Civil Service pays so well? Yes, but only indirectly. The guys with the really nice houses in the best neighborhoods in that area mostly are not working for the Federal Government. Instead they are running small businesses where the customers are the Federal Government or are working for the Federal Government. E.g., a dentist can do well because the millions of people there working for the Federal Government aren't rich but are relatively well off and can afford to pay for a dentist. So, if want to run your own small business, then maybe pick one of those three areas. E.g., in Silicon Valley, to heck with venture capital and information technology and, instead, be an electrician who installs fantastic underwater lighting in swimming pools of successful information technology entrepreneurs. Or run a red sauce Italian restaurant, say, near Gaithersburg, MD.

desperadoi• 13 years ago

cannot agree more

The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age

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