The Brutal Ageism of Tech

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brutal-ageism

by GabrielF00 • 12 years ago

535 340 12 years ago

Here's the thing, the software-is-eating-the-world explosion really took off in the early 90's (or at least that's when myself and a bunch of friends I knew got into it). All the people that got into writing software back then are aging and most that I know aren't planning to stop. I myself am on the doorstep of my 36th birthday. For those of us that have slogged it out for multiple decades now aren't simply going to go sit at home and wish we were 20 again. The sheer number of aging engineers will cause this problem to reach a breaking point. Those of us that have been instilled with the "disrupt the establishment" ethos in the 90's and 2000's will find a new industry to disrupt...our own.

colmmacc• 12 years ago

For a long time I looked around at the relative lack of 40+ developers and founders in my field and considered it worrisome; what will I do when I get to that age? do I need a massive bank of savings just in case?

But I think it's also easy to see it as an opportunity. We are staggeringly lucky generation; software is the future and it isn't going the way of mass automation or obsolescence any time soon. There is probably another two hundred years of foundational innovation left in the field, we're still just scratching the surface of information theory and what's possible. Experience is likely to increase in value.

As individuals; by cultivating just a little higher order thinking, and seeing above the surface layer of raw code, it shouldn't be hard to offer meaningful value and insight for the remainder of one's lifetime. I don't think the key is learning to "adapt", progressing from one fad language or technique to another, so much as it is to see the similarities between these fads and to understand them at a higher level of abstraction. To understand that SOA programming is the same thing as micro-kernels, or CSP, for example, and to seem to offer new wisdom by regurgitating the old.

In that spirit, I've observed that the successful senior engineers I've come to know don't decry constant change, but constant same-ness.

ilaksh• 12 years ago

Interesting points but a few things I disagree with. Its not so much about offering meaningful insight as it is about being a bro you can hang out with..in a lot of cases..I.e. fitting in with the "culture". So I think the slightly older guys are going to have to find common ground to band together on because they aren't going to mesh culturally with the youngsters necessarily. Other thing about two hundred year, humans will be irrelevant within 40 years, and software development, if we were able to see into the future, will basically look like magic.. for example direct manifestations of simulated realtime imaginations of a multiperson via programmable matter.

foolinaround• 12 years ago

While we can try to disrupt, we are handicapped on the energy or the risks that we need to take to get this done.

ascendantlogic5• 12 years ago

Sure, older engineers usually can't take the "live off my friends couch and eat Ramen for a year" risks that 20-somethings can take. There are a lot of problems that can be solved in a 40-50 hour workweek though. Problems that can be solved with near-immediate profitability, etc. Or so my gut tells me.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

I think ageism in tech will mature along with the industry as well, that was the first wave and a very disruptive one, so this generation has disruption as a modus operandi.

Back then old meant something different as it was a new industry, older people didn't grow up with tech and there was a huge valley/difference between someone that gets tech and a generations before that didn't have it. Everyone below 40-50ish (and definitely everyone in their 30s and below) has had tech around their whole lives and at a more core level as it was new and attracted mainly young people then, but now it attracts all people and has had people working in it for decades (past mid 90s when the internet went mainstream, most are still doing it).

I have to say working for over a decade in tech/programming that most of the really good programmers were over 30s (and all good product developers were either close or over 30), this is because it takes 10 years to get good at anything even if you start in your teens, shipping products for 10 years can't be sped up. Someone out of college at 23-24 needs to work until 33-34 to be really good. To discard that is futile and young programmers might even be scared away from this line of work if there are no future prospects. I also believe it will be detrimental to our entire country as technology is so important now.

Funny enough in game development some of the best I have worked with were actually in their 40s nearing 50s even though it is also seen as a young industry, game companies wouldn't ship anything without experienced developers of 5-10 years, you can't get that experience and then be worthless at 35.

When there is a new industry, the people in it at that time sometimes gain more valuable lower level experience because the platforms/layer is still being constructed. So engine developers that are older were almost always better than younger because they have the core knowledge without the layers of fluff that product cycles can add. Just like back in the day hardware was more prevalent and a population of people that were in it then are sometimes better at it because they were around when it was big.

The market is also solving ageism by paying programmers better than managers many times. Noone will desire to go manage if it is a step down. There was a temporary moment in time when there were NO development managers, sales/marketing/bizdev couldn't manage it. So they NEEDED programmers to go into management to make sense of it and they are good at marketing so it stuck in the collective psyche. That has changed dramatically and I believe this will mature the industry.

Also, let's not confuse ageism for VC funding selectiveness, they will always choose younger because the term sheet is easier with younger that are less knowledgable about value. The 'problem' with older coders is they know they can ship and know their value.

Who knows, if the WhatsApp guys were younger Facebook could have gotten it cheaper. If older developers build more value, VCs will see they can flip for higher amounts and that may also help this perception problem.

Ageism isn't just a problem for older developers, it is a problem for younger developers as well in that they are smart contributors that will be shut off after 10-15 years of solid work, right when most of them will be in their prime and contributing to society.

collyw4• 12 years ago

Yep, I have around 11 years experience, and I would say I am starting to get good. I see younger colleagues and see lots of incompetence, (including mistakes I would have made a few years ago). Can I get a payrise now? No chance.

allochthon• 12 years ago

Hopefully this is where things are going. I like this future much better than one in which engineers are disposable.

danso• 12 years ago

I don't really get the pragmatism behind ageism in tech entrepreneurship. That is, in a field in which human abilities are augmented by ever-more faster computing, and in which ideas, experience, and relationships would seemingly be as important (if not much more) as youthful energy...how is it logical that its best people would solely be among sub-30-year olds? It just doesn't make any sense.

ascendantlogic5• 12 years ago

It's not a capability thing. It's a make-you-work-more-hours-for-less-money-than-the-older-engineer thing.

adamnemecek3• 12 years ago

But why do they care so much about hours and not about output? I would kind of understand if this was for some web technologies since older devs might not be up to speed with the latest compile-to-JS language but I can't imagine that someone who has been writing say C++ for the last 20 years would not perform better than someone fresh out of school.

kaliblack• 12 years ago

Which, ironically, is tied to the conventional management view that butts on seats equal productivity.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

Us older guys discovered long ago that the more hours/week beyond a certain amount you work, the less you accomplish.

Besides, I write my best code when I'm jogging. I just type it in when I get back to my desk.

UK-AL6• 12 years ago

because 90% of starts ups are just fancy websites and mobile phone apps. They don't really need highly advanced programming/maths/Machine Learning skills.

They rather have naive young developers willing to work constant overtime, to get the fancy javascript frontend web page out faster.

ghaff• 12 years ago

If I were an SV employment lawyer, I'd be making a copy of the "careers" page referenced in that article. I suspect that would look very very bad as Exhibit A in an age discrimination case against the company in general. Sure, there could be other interpretations (maybe) but...

briantakita3• 12 years ago

Some companies are addicted to long hours & naive employees.

It's also a natural progression of an engineer to start off as an employee & then take an independent identity. So it's common to see older engineers become consultants & business owners; who then hire the younger, cheaper, more impressionable employees.

daveqr• 12 years ago

Guess what, there's a lot of software being written by people not in their 20s in places like Kansas City, Boston and Nashville. The world doesn't revolve around Silicon Valley.

ascendantlogic5• 12 years ago

And that's really the thing a lot of these articles miss. While 20-somethings are making software to automate burrito delivery to other 20-somethings with drones in San Francisco, there's a whole world full of developers solving real problems each day. But it's hard to convince the rest of the world that there's more to the software industry than the Bay Area echo chamber.

Edit: I know not all of Silicon Valley is doing pointless startups.

erddojo2• 12 years ago

This is true. There's a perception that 20/30-somethings are the hot thing in tech because they're building the kind of consumer apps that techCrunch likes to cover.

But there are a ton of startups/developers building really cool tech - in SF and beyond - and they end to be older and more interested in real technology vs cashing out their options.

gamegoblin2• 12 years ago

Yyyyep. Step into one of Walmart's cubicle farms in Bentonville, Arkansas and it's mostly middle aged folks hacking away in C# and VB.

aceperry• 12 years ago

Interestingly, the Walmart Lab in the bay area is a big promoter of html5, javascript, and all of the latest web tech.

Kerrick• 12 years ago

Or step into somewhere like my workplace in downtown St. Louis, a skyscraper built in 1911 renovated into modern offices.

The bootstrapped, 6-year-old former startup I work for is filled with people from their 20s on up past 50s making, selling, and supporting Software as a Service, with the developers hacking away at a RESTful API and Ember.js apps. Plus, we share the building with Kickstarted startups like Pixel Press, VC-funded startups like TrakBill, etc. and we're a couple blocks from an incubator + coworking space with 80 startups at every stage.

Being away from Silicon Valley doesn't make you automatically boring, or a cubicle farm, or even full of old people

gmjosack• 12 years ago

But the benefits are definitely hard to compete with. I worked for 8 years back in South Florida, 4 at a web hosting company, another 4 at a digital media company. Having to buy pop-tarts/soda in a vending machine, 2 weeks vacation, dealing with dinosaur middle management. It's incredibly frustrating.

Now I'm in the Bay Area and I often consider getting out but in general the jobs here just have better benefits. I'm not just talking about foosball/ping pong tables. I'm talking Gourmet meals, 3-4 weeks vacation, unlimited sick time, people who want to work on interesting technology problems, great salaries plus equity.

If I decided to leave my job today, there are a ton of good options all over with the exact same comp package, because they have to to be competitive in this area. I could relocate but I'd feel I was held hostage by the other options in the area I chose to move to.

I've seen the other side and it'd take a lot for me to go back.

bengotow2• 12 years ago

Nashville represent! I build mobile apps for a living and I love that the environment here is diverse and creative. Walk into a coffee shop and you see people talking, writing, and socializing - not bent over their identically sticker-covered Macbook Pros.

As an iOS dev here, you can expect to make 85-100k and spend < $1000 / mo on rent. There's also no state income tax, so you get a 9.6% bonus right off the bat. Not too bad if you ask me!

Retric• 12 years ago

The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30.

Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's along with a few people that are nearing retirement age and while often gruff tend to blow your minds. As in "we stopped testing his code years ago." Or just calling someone team _. As in you could get 15-30 people working on a project or if your lucky Bob.

bliti• 12 years ago

Another benefit (I might be selling myself here, watch out) is that older programmers have lived through more issues. Be it management, technical, HR, etc. We have seen more. And some of us know how to steer clear of such issues, and when to interject.

chiph• 12 years ago

Side effect this is that they don't freak out when stuff goes wrong. They've seen a lot of stuff go wrong in their lives, and they know how to work through it to a solution.

nahname• 12 years ago

I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30.

Are you sure you are not committing the same ageist judgement here?

jmspring3• 12 years ago

Depends on what one defines as "competent" and the problem space. A lot of colleges that the thirty and under set that I've talked with don't always have a required path in CS that teaches systems and architecture, let alone C (or assembler). So, if one expect such from someone with a CS degree, that could be an issue.

The tooling accessible to people today as opposed to those that started 10 years prior is also extremely different. Running Windows? Trumpet Winsock, understanding the win.ini, config.sys, and autoexec.bat were important. Linux - a lot of people have wasted a lot of time getting sound and video drivers (as well as xf86config files) to work right, most just work fine now. All these required a level of digging that required knowing more about the system than you may have wanted.

Not saying your point isn't valid, but it does depend on what one's definition of "competent" is.

jeffdavis• 12 years ago

There are two kinds of reverse discrimination:

One is an active reverse discrimination that is attempting to tilt the balance back (often enforced with some kind of law or policy). This has all kinds of well-known problems (that arguably are larger than the benefits).

The other is a more natural reverse discrimination that comes from collecting the missed opportunities of your competitors. If your competitors reject candidates for frivolous reasons, then it's easier for you to hire qualified people. I think this is what the parent comment was doing, and it doesn't strike me as a problem.

Cthulhu_2• 12 years ago

He's just making an observation and a possible correlation (X competent people, 3 younger than 30), not a causation (X people were incompetent because they were younger than 30).

late2part• 12 years ago

One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints. Experienced people have learned a set of platonic causations that they apply to pattern matched situations. When they come into a new situation, if they match patterns that don't quite fit, they'll apply old solutions to situations that are not appropriate.

Enders Game is a good allegory for this.

It's good to have diversity and meritocratic process for decision making. It's good to have different perspectives, but recognize that sometimes bad experience is worse than little experience.

rsl7• 12 years ago

A competent person would understand why the solution did or didn't work the previous times, and thus why it would or wouldn't this time.

What you're saying is that some people don't learn from their experiences. You should focus on finding out if they have. That's worth way more than hoping that this young kid will.

SomeCallMeTim6• 12 years ago

Experienced people have learned a set of platonic causations that they apply to pattern matched situations.

Good developers do use pattern matching. But good developers just use it as a way to come up with ideas, and they use their experience to judge the ideas.

There's no such thing as "bad experience", just poor reasoning skills. And mostly people will improve their reasoning skills over time. Unfortunately, not always.

bsder3• 12 years ago

One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints.

Prove it with some research. The current research shows that people really don't make their best contributions to their field before 35-45.

And, to be fair, I see more young people who attempt to hit the screw with a hammer because a hammer is the only tool they have.

RogerL3• 12 years ago

Bullshit.

You are the one with a "platonic causation", namely, older = rigid thinking.

Enders Game is a child's book, written to appeal to children. Note we don't actually have 9 year olds making decisions in reality.

cratermoon• 12 years ago

Experienced developers have more patterns to apply, and they have more sophisticated patterns that can be applied using differential diagnostics. An inexperienced developer might not have any pattern to apply, or may naively apply the wrong one. Sometimes that leads to re-inventing the wheel, sometimes that leads to solving the wrong problems. Errors of the latter sort are favorites for senior developers to come in and clean up.

mbrubeck• 12 years ago

The software industry has been growing rapidly in recent decades, and the growth has been concentrated in a few geographic areas. So employers in those areas (especially Silicon Valley, and also smaller hubs like Seattle and Boston) have to recruit a lot of their workers from other regions, as their job openings grow faster than the "organic" growth of the local worker population.

Theory: This importing of workers has negative effects on age and gender diversity, since it means a higher proportion of jobs go to people who can easily relocate for work. That includes young people (who are less likely to have kids and/or spouses) and men (who more often receive the primary or larger income in a household). I'm sure you can think of other things that are advantages or disadvantages when it comes to moving to California for a job.

There are ways to test whether this effect exists and how large it is. For example, you could compare age and gender diversity across industries. The theory predicts that age/gender imbalance is correlated with geographic concentration of employment growth for each industry. You could also see whether these imbalances are worse within industry hubs, compared to companies in the same industry outside the hubs. (Though the effect can also spread outside the hubs if it influences a culture that gets exported to the rest of the industry.)

I'll bet geographers or sociologists have published research on this subject, though I don't know enough to search for it effectively. (I found some vaguely related papers on Google Scholar, but nothing yet with data that would directly answer these questions.) There are some historical parallels of course, like gold rushes and resource extraction booms that cause new industries to grow suddenly in a particular area.

sanxiyn• 12 years ago

After some search, "Disruptive decisions to leave home: Gender and family differences in expatriation choices" seem relevant, and you can crawl citations from there.

zacharypinter• 12 years ago

Another interesting aspect to rapid growth is to note where the influx of new developers is coming from.

The need for developers is so strong that all the major tech companies are devoting resources to recruiting as soon as developers graduate.

That dynamic could account for a reasonably large part of the age imbalance in the industry. If there was a similar-sized pipeline of recently-trained developers with a more diverse age group than university students the story would likely be different.

aortega10• 12 years ago

Not so much. I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff.

No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming, unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are about less than 10000 of those guys in the world. Of course there are 40 year olds that may have way more experience than me in a specific language or technology.

My point is that if computer tech is only 30 year old, then you won't find programmers with more than 30 years of experience, no matter their age.

ams6110• 12 years ago

The TI99-4/a was discontinued in 1983 as I well remember because it happened not long after I spent my savings from my paper route to buy one.

If you were using one at age 10 and are now 35 that would have been 1989/1990 or so... there were no magazines writing about it by that time. You had some old issues of the TI-99er or something?

Gormo3• 12 years ago

Computer technology is about 60 years old, though. There were people doing some pioneering work in the 50s and 60s, and the modern hacker culture really has its roots in the 1970s, just prior to the rise of personal computing.

There was lots of stuff going on with the DEC minicomputers, LISP machines, early UNIX systems, and big-iron mainframes long before most of us were even born, let alone getting our starts on TI-99s, Apple IIs, and Commodore 64s. And let's not forget that the people who were creating those early home-computer platforms were themselves all from the previous generation.

Would you turn people like Steve Wozniak or Al Alcorn or Ken Williams away from your new startup? You'd be a fool if you did. The basic architecture of computers hasn't changed at all since they did their most important work, and the cognitive skillset that makes a great programmer is the same as it's always been.

In fact, I'd expect that people who cut their teeth on early systems, and had to work within narrow constraints, without a big stack of abstraction layers and frameworks, would be all the more adept at writing robust and efficient code than those who learned on modern tools. And I'd bet, with Moore's law slowing down, and with better-optimized code becoming more advantageous in building scalable systems, older programmers will soon be in higher demand.

SomeCallMeTim6• 12 years ago

No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming

I started programming toys in 1979. [1] I started programming "modern" computers in 1981. I was selling games when I was 15 in 1983. My "real" professional experience started in 1987 with a contract to write a video game from a major publisher.

So yes, it's not hard for someone to have "more experience" than you in general programming.

[1] I had one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak

dinkumthinkum2• 12 years ago

You think you have more experience than 40 year olds because you were typing in games when you were a kid? How about the people working when you were a kid? I don't know, this is sort of an incredible thing to say.

kybernetikos• 12 years ago

30 years ago, computers were actually pretty common. The school I went to had two rooms full of computers and were teaching programming to every child as part of the maths lessons. Software was being talked about everywhere.

I've heard a number of these comments recently drastically underestimating how long computers have been around.

dasil003• 12 years ago

I'm 35 and I was doing OOP via HyperTalk and AppleSoft BASIC with a dose of 65C816 assembler before you picked up your calculator. Also, TIs were toys compared to HPs.

arethuza• 12 years ago

"My point is that if computer tech is only 30 year old"

I'd be really interested as to how you get that figure...

zacinbusiness2• 12 years ago

I'm sorry, what? If a guy has been doing a job for longer than you then he can't possibly have more experience than you? Isn't "experience" "doing"?

walshemj• 12 years ago

Really I first coded at 13 in the early 70's at school and started professionally in 79 (fortran) so thats 34 years

brohee2• 12 years ago

My father was programming before you were born...

Working in a bank, not for an editor...

RogerL3• 12 years ago

Well, you are "old". Yup, over thirty, you have missed the boat. Welcome to the new ageism.

FWIW, I'm 47 and was programming assembly and microcode in my youth. So I have 10 years on you. At this scale, I doubt the difference matters much. Because you are old, too.

richardjordan• 12 years ago

Started programming on an Apple II which I still own, in 1983 aged 11. I'm 42 now so that's 31 years. You'd need to have started at 4. Plus by the mid eighties it's not like this was that rare. My school had rooms of computers (BBC Micros, later PCs) and the kids all had ZX Spectrums, Vic20s and Commodore 64s. There are tons of people on their 40s like that. Most CompSci and Physics undergrads who were my contemporaries at college - so also now in their 40s - followed similar paths.

So it makes little sense to suggest that it's somehow a crazy idea that someone 5-15 years older than you (in their 40s) might have a longer track record working with computers.

laurasbadideas• 12 years ago

I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff.
No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming, unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are about less than 10000 of those guys in the world.

You're talking about 1989, right? In 1983, there were 443,000 computer programmers and 276,000 "Computer systems analysts, scientists" in the United States alone (source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/96statab/labor.pdf).

grayarea• 12 years ago

TI99? You pussy. I'm 40 and when I was 10 used to help my Dad build homebrew z80 machines. My first programming was writing a small OS in z80 asm. Helped him build an awesome z280(that was a rare chip) transputer.

holdenc• 12 years ago

Who's more unemployable -- an older developer? Or, an older developer with noticeable plastic surgery? I suppose there's some truth in the article, but most older developers, or even just technically astute individuals, that I know would never consider plastic surgery. And, as an aside, most older developers I know would never settle for the younger developer lifestyle of sacrificing their free-time and non-tech-relationships all for some street cred, adventure and a healthy paycheck. Good older developers I know are just interested in different things.

jowiar2• 12 years ago

One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical experience that took a break of a decade or two.

My father got lucky in that he was successful in his transition out of engineering, and was 67 by the time his position went extinct, but there are a whole bunch of folks who would rather have been engineers than otherwise, but ended up missing out on a couple decades where the daily tasks of building software changed dramatically so gained less in technical expertise than they should have, and were left hanging around age 50.

I have a ton of cultural criticisms of the current tech industry, but the one thing that it is absolutely getting right is valuing creation. The damage that could have been caused by the Google/Apple cartel has been limited largely by the startup industry that, for all its faults, has as a crucial belief that the act of building things is valuable, and that people who make things are the ones who create the most value.

Fr0styMatt2• 12 years ago

This makes a lot of sense. It's something that I feel is changing nowadays thankfully.

Zenst3• 12 years ago

You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for) and was somewhat begrudged that he would have to shave his beard of just to get the job irespective of his ability.

That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed.

With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or present?

jmspring3• 12 years ago

At some point, IBM decided catering to wall street was more important than doing real work. Take a look at Cringely's articles on IBM. I've known people that worked as contractors at IBM Almaden and as the transition was occurring, they went out of their way to not end up on the radar -- the impression I got was that management being aware of your project was a risk for being cut. This was even worse for the rank and file full timers.

IBM used to invest in it's employees. My advisor was of a generation where if you saved IBM X dollars in terms of research patents, etc, you were well supported as time went on. Additionally, they had a culture of investing in their employees. I don't know when the change happened... I want to say sometime in the mid/late 90s things shifted and have since.

Taek2• 12 years ago

I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful as a server.

That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got all the respect.

IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.

jowiar2• 12 years ago

My parents worked a long time at IBM - Dad from about '70-'00, give or take a couple years, and Mom from '77-'86, then again in the late '90s for a few years. I don't think it was an ageism culture per se in terms of older people being less valued, but from both of them, the career advancement was in either sales or management. I don't think the vision for either was to stay technical and advance on the basis of technical ability.

There was a cultural shift internally when Gerstner was brought in - before then, there was a culture of "join us, and IBM will take care of you". Saving the company in the '80s required giving that mentality up, and it destroyed much of what, in my parents' eyes, made IBM a special place to work.

hindsightbias• 12 years ago

Re ageism, it depends on where you are and what you are working on. I know and have known many who have 30, 35 and 40 years in and stayed in engineering.

For development, it's all about having your niche. If your niche is stable, age isn't an issue. If your niche is going away, there's little reason to keep a 50 yr old C cubicle guy to switch to consulting, 50% travel and code the latest flavor. There's just no cruising on your laurels anywhere anymore and the market turns over much more quickly.

My observation of recent layoffs is that it's ageism in that most of the people in these jobs are well into their 50's and some into their 60's. Young is 40, and if you weren't in a critical niche, you were just as likely to go as any.

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

I think this is a huge part of it, folks who stop "keeping up" with the technology eventually find there is a huge amount of catching up to do. When that happens, especially if there isn't a lot of runway, it can be difficult.

I remark to folks all the time that you can take someone right out of high school, and have them spend about 2000 hrs learning about "computers" and now they are 'hot shot programmers' that are in demand. 2000 hours is a bit more than a year at 5 hours a day factor in that the math, and intro classes aren't necessary for someone who has both done the degree before and spent some years working in the field, and I suspect that any engineer taking a 6 month sabbatical could be right back to current. And completely current with the wisdom of organizational dynamics, work habits honed by years of what worked and what didn't, that person should be like gold.

The place where I feel sad is when someone says "I've been unemployed and spent the last 6 months sending out resumes and no one will call me because I'm old." Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age.

tsotha4• 12 years ago

Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age.

There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that.

Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon.

The fifty year old is slowing down. He takes drugs for his blood pressure that make him tired. He has ailing parents and teenagers at home.

Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time?

You can't play to a young man's strengths if you want to compete with young men when you're over forty. IMO you'd be better off as the last guy who knows COBOL than just like every other mobile programmer with six months of experience except older and slower.

yukichan2• 12 years ago

Experience is a liability. You learn all kinds of things as an engineer that quickly become obsolete. Even in the web environment. If you're still worried about hasLayout or rounding corners with images, or god forbid using tables for layout, or even setting explicit widths on your web pages instead of responsive media queries, you're adhering to obsolete ways of doing things that are hurting you more than helping.

Edit: Am I being downvoted because I'm wrong or because you just don't like what I have to say? Both are wrong reasons to downvote, but you go, you go downvote. My comment is reality. It may not be what you want to hear, but it isn't a low quality comment. I'm so tired of this silly site and it's potato filled echo chamber.

briantakita3• 12 years ago

Getting stuck in your ways is a liability.

Someone who is continuously improving, while remaining aware of the current environment, will have experience as an asset.

Edit to your edit: You have much to learn...That's reality. Don't worry, I also have much to learn ;-)

yukichan2• 12 years ago

Yes, you have to continuously improve, and also recognize that the things you learned before may no longer apply. Always know why you have to do the things you do and when that isn't true anymore.

Also I didn't understand half of what you said.

greenyoda• 12 years ago

Experience also gives you the kind of skills that don't become obsolete, and which can't be learned in just a couple of years of practice:

- Writing reliable, maintainable and testable code

- Strategies for solving problems that are very large or very difficult

- The ability to interact well with developers, product managers, executives, customers, etc.

- Knowledge of algorithms and other fundamental things in computer science

Being a good software developer is about a lot more than just dealing with the mechanics of the particular software environment you happen to be using today.

pacaro• 12 years ago

Someone much more experienced than I am once said to me that experience doesn't teach you more answers, it teaches you more questions.

The answers change as the landscape evolves, but know which questions to ask...

na852• 12 years ago

implying silly CSS and javascript for your webapp is real programming

See? I can be edgy and abrasive too, with equal amounts of validity in your comment as in my summary of it.

rjd• 12 years ago

No you are getting downvoted because you are as wrong as you can possibly get. And by the looks of it CSS focused... which I wouldn't even call engineering.

Things rarely go obsolete for one thing. Try explaining why COBAL, FORTRAN, VB6, ColdFusion, or hell more modern stuff like J2EE are still around and in good usage. Things become unpopular, often for good reason, but they don't go obsolete for well over a decade. When something costs over a million dollars to construct and its working OK then theres no reason to get rid of it. Most places can't afford multi million rebuilds because its become unfashionable.

What you also learn as you get older is most modern advances are just rehashes (often poorly as they where written over a month instead of years in a research lab) of existing ideas. Or they are nothing more than a load of premade scripts which are nice (and I'm very thankful for the ones I've used) but if you work with clients or existing stacks those often become problematic.

The new ideas that stick often take 5 years to get rolling, and another 5-10 before they sunset. I wouldn't call that quick by any stretch of the imagination. The hype moves fast... but the technology doesn't.

So separate yourself from the hype and you'll see a world moving a lot slower than you think, the given time the overwhelming torrent of new ideas starts to become a same old shit, different day scenario.

mattgreenrocks5• 12 years ago

Only in programming do we have the gall to actually cast aspersions about experience.

This sentiment will bite you in the ass.

ascendantlogic5• 12 years ago

Your comment is your perceived reality, and quite frankly it's wrong. If experience is a liability then the end-game of that line of thinking is there should be zero schooling or learning of any sort. If you're not learning everything from the ground up by yourself you're getting someone else's preconceived notions drilled into your head.

I'm sure you can see how this line of thinking leads to a total logical breakdown. The issue I think you are trying to illustrate oh-so-ineloquently is that a lot of developers ossify into "what they know". Then you end up in the "I have this one hammer and everything looks like a nail" issue that is actually real. Keeping up with current trends, tools and design patterns is definitely harder as you get older, but also one of the interesting parts of the job. For those who can't or won't adapt and learn, I'm sure there will be plenty of J2EE apps to maintain over the next few decades just like there are still Cobol apps to maintain now.

rayiner• 12 years ago

You're being down voted because what you're wrong (which I agree is not a good use of a down vote). You seem like someone who doesn't realize that software technology doesn't really change, just get painted a different color. Its like a Dunning-Kruger effect for life experience.

kasey_junk2• 12 years ago

My favorite part of your comment is that most of the things you are complaining about were considered bad practice the last time I was a professional web developer and that was going on 15 years ago.

If you are routinely running into these issues, the problem isn't with the experience of your peer group, it's with their quality.

graycat2• 12 years ago

My Web pages use tables for layout, and each of my Web pages is exactly 800 pixels wide. It's simple. Dirt simple.

Using tables lets me put things on the page just where the heck I want them. I don't know of any easier way with HTML or CSS, and I'm not going to write any JavaScript -- won't do that. Having all my pages just 800 pixels wide is just what I want for my view of a good UI/UX for my Web site. And the Web pages should look okay on everything with a Web browser right up to date as of, say, five years ago. So, I'm not going to test my pages on several versions of each of several Web browsers on each of several devices and, with such simple Web pages likely don't have to. And I have no pop ups, pull downs, roll overs, or anything else that has the screen change just do to mouse movements or anything else except deliberate user actions.

That's the way I want the pages to be at least for now.

modarts• 12 years ago

at least for now.

That statement right there is the reason tables are a terrible idea for layout.

Fr0styMatt2• 12 years ago

I wonder if this is a 'Valley' or just a 'Startup' thing as it doesn't seem too common here in Australia in the part of the industry that I work in (defence and now gaming); though maybe I'm just lucky and have been in the right parts.

We have a massive age range all the way from 20 to 60 (I guess), with most of the better engineers in their 30s-40s it seems, though to be honest you wouldn't really know unless you asked - there are guys here that you wouldn't guess were 40.

Personally I know I'm a far better engineer now in my mid-30s than I was in my 20s and to be honest I STILL feel like a beginner excited to finally find his feet. I don't see this stopping anytime soon. I don't want to get into management and luckily don't have to and I'm sure at 45 I'll be a far better software engineer than I am now (well, I sure hope so at least :) ).

erddojo2• 12 years ago

These stories are starting to wear thin.

The people in SF/SV building apps are mostly in their 20s-30s.

The people building cool technology are mostly in their 40s-50s.

tsunamifury• 12 years ago

This generalization is so impossible to make its laughable.

I know 20 year olds making brain wave analysis breakthroughs and 50 year olds making poker apps. And the reverse.

Great work knows no age.

mattgreenrocks5• 12 years ago

Great work knows no age.

And there's not enough of it to go around.

kansface2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how you'd define cool shit, but we have actual data for scientific breakthroughs by age: see http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/big-breakt....

|The authors examined the high points of the careers of both great inventors and Nobel-Prize winning scientists, and they found that the late 30s were the sweet spot for strokes of genius

The gist is that this number (38ish) has been slowly creeping up over the past century; it is generally higher in those fields which require a synthesis of huge amounts of knowledge (experimentalists) and earlier among theorists. Notice that essentially no one has done anything groundbreaking in their 50s (yet).

guiomie• 12 years ago

Would you guys say this is more of a west coast issue then east cost ?

hibikir• 12 years ago

Well, I can tell you that in the midwest, if anything, the difficult part is to find young developers. Back when I started, it was not uncommon to have 22 year-old dev leads. a 30 year-old was a dinosaur, or in management. Today, most companies around here are pretty much ignoring kids out of school, and hiring 30 somethings. Last year, I worked in a team where the youngest dev had been programming professionally for 15 years, and we weren't working with any old legacy stuff.

What has happened is that most of the bad developers that I worked with 20 years ago are working in banks or outside of development, because it's much easier to hide your incompetence in our 20s than in your 40s.

Now, Silicon Valley is full of fresh meat, and of companies whose best asset is having a guy that is fluent in venturespeak, so I am sure the experience is very different. Just like it's harder to find a .NET job in Seattle if you haven't worked at Microsoft before, given how many former Microsoft employees are available to compete with you.

mariodiana• 12 years ago

More evidence that we are in an investment bubble. Nineteen-ninety-nine called -- wait and see.

Zenst3• 12 years ago

I started my IT path early in the 80's working for a Goverment facility doing COBOL programminmg at the tender age of 17. Agisim back then was against young people and more the older people working in the industry. This was born out when a year later a new batch of trainee's of which one I was mentoring was actualy being paid twice what I was. This was soley due to age.

I moved on to another company and trippled my salary in the private sector, though again was told by the recruiter if I was over 21 I would of got paid at least £2k more than I was.

After a short time I moved into contracting at around the age of 19, doing COBOL work. Again I had many issues due to ageisim for being so young in what was a old generation feild. Interviews would be a complete grilling of which I excelled and shone above and with that got the work. Age was still a factor then and as a young contractor I was often dismissed by people soley due to my age. Though would always shine above them in technical ability, because I had too.

After a few years contracting and the isolation of being a contractor amongst permies(permenant staff) I would feel left out and moved back into permenant work.

Times changed, now it is the reverse and sadly I missed both boats, being at the age of 47 and with the IT feild often shafted on many managerial levels I somewhat regret not working in a building trade as many people I know did and made better money, more free time, less stress and burden. Not forgetting it is a older trade and with that TAX wise more adapt in NI contributions (National Insurance - UK thing) being a pitance on contract to IT, which is full rate. Then there was the introduction of IR35 desigend to penalise contractors in IT directly.

It still is finding it's feet and whilst law and accounts have there long standing estabilished exams of recognition, IT still does not. With any certification easily expiring in a few years and nothing holding up for a lifetimes of work.

Sadly that still prevails and IT is often the butt of all departments in many a company and often shat upon, little reward for good work that saves money over other departments who add little value.

But during my time, one event stuck out. I went for a permenant job at a company - PC Database work, Dataease and turned up at reception ontime. Was left waiting for 30 minutes then handed a form to fill out, which was basicly a HR form regergitating what was already on my CV. I then had an intervew with the HR manager. She was very curt and rude and said, that is a lot of money for somebody your age and was very dismissive and really put me off the company. I had the IT department intervew with a manager and contractor they had in who was an `expert` in the feild. Shone thru and even educated the contractor about a hidden debug mode, happily answeared the question about post codes in so much detail that it was scary (post codes same as USA ZIP codes). This resulted in a job offer before I even got home, offering me more than I was (the recruiter) asked for. I turned it down flat for a lesser paid role as the HR experience had put me off completely from that company.

So whilst agisim is a problem, that problem has gone from looking down upon young people, to looking down upon older people.

But the real issue of IT and one that will carry on for many years is one of establishment, be it certification and exams that stand the test of time akin to accountants or lawyers. Until that day, IT will always in many companies be the shat feild for many due to upper managment mentality. Which ironicly enough is the older people mostly. Younger managerment (CEO's etc) have more respect for IT and also sadly less respect for older people in IT.

With that I often wished I was born earlier or later instead of catching the shit-tide from both ends from when I was young and now older.

fecak5• 12 years ago

Ageism is a real problem, but in my opinion ageism is often cited by job seekers where the problem is something else entirely. In tech, there seems to be quite a bit of discrimination today against employees who have worked for many years at the same position, and that discrimination is typically aimed at large environments. Startups seem to be ok with hiring older engineers who bounced around and worked in startups in the past, but they usually won't give much consideration to a 50 year old who developer has spent the last 25 years at an insurance company or major bank.

Take two 50 year old engineers. The one who has had 10 jobs over the past 25 years is considered infinitely more employable than the one with 25 years at the same department of the same company.

This case isn't ageism, it's the expectation of career stagnation, yet many of those engineers with that 25 year tenure think it is. It's a leftover from the days when loyalty was tied to tenure, and loyalty was valued highly in the hiring criteria. Those days are over. Loyalty is nice, but loyalty that negatively impacts your career options (no learning or improving, inability to use marketable tech skills, etc) is foolish.

vonmoltke3• 12 years ago

That makes a presumption that someone who spent 25 years at the same employer stagnated. I spent nearly 10 years at my first employer, but in that time I had three different positions. On my resume I have started listing it as three separate positions, which seems to confuse some people but is an accurate portrayal of my time there. I do not think one employer == one role is an accurate assumption and that "10 jobs over the past 25 years" vs. '25 years at the same department of the same company" is a false dichotomy that assumes people like me do not exist.

fecak5• 12 years ago

I'm not saying the assumption is fair, and there are certainly exemptions. I'm saying that startups tend to assume that if you've been at the same place for 25 years, there is a reason for that, and the reason is usually negative.

When you say 'people like me', keep in mind that just because you have had three different roles at one company in itself doesn't mean you didn't stagnate, just as the person with ten jobs may have stagnated.

All assumptions have some danger, and I'm not condoning the behavior. I think it's valuable to explain to people who feel they are being discriminated against based on age may be more likely associated with stagnation (actual or assumed) based on extended tenure.

PeterisP2• 12 years ago

If you've switched 10 companies in the last 25 years, then your value contains lots of stuff that was transferrable/common to different jobs; if you've been 25 years in a single tech area, then it's very likely that your key value is in-depth knowledge of that particular area - unless I need that exact area expertise; an employee with 10 different shallow expertises would be more valuable to me than 1 really deep expertise that's outside my scope.

xupybd• 12 years ago

What we need is a movement of `experienced` devs to get out there and form some companies that employ mainly older devs. I'm sure the quality from such a company would be incredible.

mattgreenrocks5• 12 years ago

They exist, but they don't emit quite as much noise as SV companies do. :)

TinyBig• 12 years ago

Do you have any recommendations on where to look for these companies? I figure they must be out there but I am not sure where to look.

zomgbbq2• 12 years ago

I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning.

There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on their of years of experience with evolving knowledge.

I decided in 2009 to specialize in mobile, when I realized how impossible it was for the startup I was working for to find any high throughput engineers, let alone high throughput engineers with niche expertise in mobile. I think it is an advantage in some ways during interviews that I can talk about decades of awesome projects I worked on while also being among the first to ship an iPhone app or a top ranking iPad app.

As they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. It's my job to make myself lucky.

lispylol2• 12 years ago

What was the job market like when you graduated from university? Do you think it's easier for you to get a job now than it is 10, 20 years ago? Just curious to hear your thoughts.

zomgbbq2• 12 years ago

When I graduated from college, it was 1994. Most people who were making good money at the time were Unix C programmers so that's what I did out of school. Honestly, I felt more ageism because I was young at the time (contrary to this article) than than I ever do now as a 40+. I was getting paid a relatively low salary and was expected to work insane hours. My accountant friends were probably making more money out of school. So, I wouldn't say it was harder to find a job then, but it was harder to find something cool or interesting than it is now.

I also think I wrote kind of silly code then. I always laugh when I think about a persistent hash table I had to write and how I went out of my way to find prime numbers for M slots using Fermat's Simple Theorem (not his last theorem) and testing for Carmichael numbers. Of course, there aren't that many prime numbers in the first place and a static table would have worked just fine! I always remember this as part of my evolution from an inexperienced academic kid solving a problem that doesn't need solving vs. experience to know where to comprimise and just get it done.

Even then, I knew it was important to start specializing where the needs were evolving, which was win32 programming at the time and eventually Windows MFC programming. This all dove-tailed nicely years later when I started working on the Playstation 3, where you develop in MS DevStudio but the PS3 was essentially a Unix box. It's funny how things work out.

The only thing that sucks about being a 40+ engineer is when I say "whachoo talkin' bout Willis" or "it's tricky to rock a rhyme", half the people don't know what I'm talking about.

pistle• 12 years ago

It's never easier to blitz through interviews and ramp on new tech than if you've seen most/all of it before.

We're just figuring out where the old abstractions land and the syntactic sugar has made life easier.

There is a massive personality issue at play. If you love this stuff, you don't let new stuff pass you by and end up being a specialist on the dead end. You're constantly sharpening the sword... because you love sharpening swords. Staying relevant and employable is a side-effect.

collyw4• 12 years ago

Depends on the interview. I would not do well in algorithmic questions these days, because I know better than to write my own. I was good a that stuff at University, but I have never had the need to implement a linked list or hash table since.

fecak5• 12 years ago

A decision to specialize in mobile in 2009 would probably have even worked out for a 60+ engineer if they were good at it. The best way to combat ageism is to stay technically relevant. Good decision.

randomdata• 12 years ago

The best way to combat ageism is to stay technically relevant.

As I get older, I find that is easier said than done. I still spend quite a lot of time learning new things, but I've become less interested in learning things that are immediately marketable. Learning yet another framework that is marginally different than the one I used on the last project is not the interesting pursuit it once was. At this point I would rather invest that time in something that might fundamentally change my outlook and understanding of the world, which is beneficial in a meta way, but isn't really something that you can specifically write down on a resume.

nostromo• 12 years ago

That's reassuring, but... What's the average retirement age in the US? 60? And here we are consoling ourselves about still being in-demand at the ripe old age of 40.

badman_ting• 12 years ago

Yeah, it's sad. Only athletes should be old at 40.

gaoshan• 12 years ago

Keep in mind that most of us aren't earning pensions and our 401Ks are earning peanuts so retirement at 60 effectively means "living on social security and whatever you managed to scrape together". Retirement will mean poverty for a great many people, I fear.

nknighthb2• 12 years ago

61 and climbing, but that number doesn't tell you much by itself. If you spend your career in SV as a reasonably in-demand developer and have no major life catastrophes, you might easily retire 5-10 years earlier with good money management. Partly depends on what kind of lifestyle you want in retirement, and where you plan to spend that retirement.

CountingCode• 12 years ago

I'm curious about the "high throughput" part of your comment. Does that mean rapid development? Lots of lines written? or what?

I find the older I get, the slower I produce code. I spend more time thinking about the solution than coding the solution. This tends to frustrate my employers, who follow the "move fast and break things" philosophy. They think I shouldn't have to think about it, just do it.

So, I guess what I'm asking is, in your opinion, is my slowing down a problem? Or an advantage?

MacsHeadroom• 12 years ago

It's a problem if you want to be on a team, especially one that does rapid development-- which is most/increasingly more of them from what I can tell.

Freelancing might suite someone like you very well though. The best freelancers write solid software at the pace that works for them.

bermanoid• 12 years ago

If your code ends up coming out the other end with fewer defects and ends up costing the company less overall than when similar tasks are done by your peers, then document that and present it to your bosses.

If it's incurring a similar bug load and just gets done slower, that's a problem and they're right to be upset.

I've seen both cases before, even from very experienced people, so it's very specific to the situation.

danbmil99• 12 years ago

I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life!

Agreed! as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452643

jmspring3• 12 years ago

Fourty plus segment here, work in a group where the average age is actually mid-30s despite a couple of junior people. Some of us are generalists, some specialists, all have kept abreast of assorted technologies as our careers have progressed.

The narrowest experience is actually amongst the mid/late 20 somethings in our group. I'm not sure if it is that lack of systems experience, not much exposure to C and lower level languages, or what, but they need more mentoring than what I recall needing at the same age.

I'm currently doing that for a couple of them and it is actually both challenging and interesting. Challenging mainly in how to convey tasks, teach them troubleshooting (without the hand holding), and a few other items. Interesting because we all learn differently and seeing how others approach problems either reminds me of my own trials or forces me to think out of the box on how to explain things.

Personally, I've always been a bit of a control freak when it comes to development -- I want to know system level through whatever level I am developing at. This often includes system administration, database management, etc. This has become much more challenging as new technologies come about -- so in those cases, say NoSQL, I will focus on one or two solutions rather than trying to understand each. Build a basis for the concepts, where it is useful, and then test, collect data and reevaluate.

karcass• 12 years ago

From where I sit, I can't figure out if this is a real thing or just hype. I'm 45, and had exactly zero trouble switching jobs recently, becoming employee #15 (developer #5) at a startup that just did its A-round. They said they liked the fact that I had done a bunch of different stuff, including founding a company in the 90's, and that I had an obvious passion for what they were doing. So, I'm not (yet) freaking out about the bits of gray in my beard.

stefan_kendall32• 12 years ago

This article might more aptly be titled the brutal ageism of silicon valley. Or perhaps the brutal ageism of startups.

There are red flags that you can easily spot in a job interview or job posting that indicate that the employer wants 80-hour weeks. And who signs up for 80-hour weeks? Naive young people who don't value their time and don't have other commitments, like side projects or family.

jedanbik• 12 years ago

Red flags like what?

stefan_kendall32• 12 years ago

"We work on very hard deadlines" "Looking for someone with energy to manage all aspects of" "We have a fast pace of development" "We want someone completely dedicated to the vision"

It's easier to gauge over the phone or in person. It's often the way things are said that act as a trigger. If a founder works 60-80 hour weeks, it's going to be expected that you will too.

jordanb• 12 years ago

Another interesting thing that this article touches on is VCs being biased against Boston, or more broadly, biased against companies headquartered anywhere except the Bay Area.

Given the increasingly insane economics of the Bay Area they're attaching millstones around the necks of the companies they invest in. And just like with ageism the purported benefits on which they base their biases are dubious at best.

LordHumungous• 12 years ago

Only idiotic Silicon Valley startups don't hire old workers. Everyone else knows the old fogies are some of the best engineers around.

ChristianMarks• 12 years ago

I've witnessed it myself. The solution in my case was to work with my ancient friends.

varelse• 12 years ago

If they'd spend the time they spent getting botox on Coursera or in youtube lectures learning the current skills that are in demand, they might just see a better result.

Pushing 50 and it frickin' works for me...

specialk• 12 years ago

Is a twenty-something founder going to hire people twice their age in the early days of their company? Unlikely.Twenty-something founders hire people they know, who are usually their own age. Friends from college, or the other twenty-somethings from their last company.

As a early-twenty-something I only know a relatively small number of engineers 30+, and have only worked with a handful. Compare that to the dozens of engineers my own old that I know, and have worked on projects together. If I founded a company tomorrow I know which 4 friends from college I would want on my team, they're all other twenty-somethings.

The only engineers over 25 I have worked with (excluding open source projects) were my bosses at previous companies. I simply wouldn't know who to hire. Anyway, would any self-respecting engineer take a job at a company found by one of their interns or recent graduates from a few years back? I highly doubt it.

In my hypothetical would I really hire someone who was twice my age? Probably not. To be honest I'd be afraid of their experience. I'd feel maybe their my training wheels. They have a lot more experience than me, will their experience take over my company's vision. Part of the mentality as a twenty-something founder is proving yourself, be that to your colleagues, your peers, your parents, or whoever said you just wouldn't make it.

I find it hard to find other twenty-somethings hiring many people twice their age in the early days. Maybe without even realising it a culture similar to that of college creeps in. Every new hire creates culture, and from my hypothetical I don't have a very diverse team to start with if I start with college friends and other twenty-somethings.

Somewhere in the early days no one seems to be spotting the 'culture' problem start-ups are creating. Was this problem unintentionally created? Or was this problem created sub-consciously created intentionally? Would I as a twenty-something founder sub-conciously create a company where my Dad or my even my cool Uncle wouldn't want to work at? Probably.

kasey_junk2• 12 years ago

This is spot on, and as an experienced dev I can tell you the other side. It's not just the culture problem, it's what can you possibly offer me to come work with you in your early stage startup?

I demand a very high premium for the work I do for others, and if I were going to start my own business, I wouldn't hire inexperienced people to do it with. I know the people I need to know to get financing/sales/engineering/etc. and they all have proven successful track records. At best you could bring passion and new ideas, at worst your college culture would creep in.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy working in environments with younger developers. Mentoring new developers is one of the most rewarding things I do. But my employers have me do it because hiring young folks is a cost of doing business.

That said, I don't think anybody is worried about ageism creeping into 3 person ramen startups. The issue is 2 fold A) if your startup becomes successful enough to need my expertise, and you don't hire me because you don't see the value of experience, that is bad for both of us. B) There currently seems to be severe bias in SV investors against older founders and/or startups that employ early stage experienced folks. Paul Graham has this bias and is proud of it. That is the ageism that gets me upset.

Finally, I will say, writing good software is a craft. Like all crafts, learning from experienced craftsmen is central to getting good at it. If writing good software is something that is important to you (it needn't be, and might even be detrimental) you need to go meet and work with older developers.

tim333• 12 years ago

I think part of the problem with VCs giving money to older guys to start a business, as opposed to writing software, is that if they were any good at building business that you'd kind of expect them to be rich already. When that is the case such as Joel Spolsky (49 ish) raising money for Stack Exchange there are no problems. Basically any VC would write him a cheque. But I can see the problem with a 49 yr old guy saying give us money for our startup, we'll make you billons in spite of having made zilch the last 30 years that VCs might be skeptical.

loomio• 12 years ago

The article focuses on an example of a guy who had totally proved himself with past success, and yet still encountered ageism.

Here's how he's introduced:

The most impressive entrepreneur in Scheinman’s portfolio who hadn’t caught on was a fortysomething Boston-based engineer named Nick Stamos. In the early 2000s, Stamos had been the chief technology officer at one start-up that eventually hit a market value of $1 billion. He later co-founded another that earned tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Everyone Stamos had ever worked with raved about his technical chops, his relentless salesmanship, his flare for innovation. “The picture was remarkable,” Scheinman says.

k2xl3• 12 years ago

Well maybe his idea sucked? Or maybe he bombed his pitch? I mean come on why assume aegism? There are way too many counter examples.

Even if a VC says they like the idea doesn't mean that it is investable.

austinz• 12 years ago

Is the stuff they talk about in the article true? Devs discussing banging girls over the weekend and having NSFW conversations that sound like they were ripped out of a 3 AM freshman dorm room filled with marijuana haze? Code filled with variable names that would make a 13 year old titter? I work for a well known SV tech company in a group with many NCGs, but neither me or my coworkers would for a moment consider any of the above acceptable behavior in a professional environment. I also worked at a startup, but it was more hardware focused and filled with older engineers (and was slightly more button down than typical). I honestly can't tell if these stories are journalistic hyperbole, or actual things that happen in a part of the tech sector that I've never seen before.

maguay• 12 years ago

Could it be that young founders feel more comfortable with employees their age or younger, and that older developers give young founders a sense of impostor syndrome? That seems as likely a reason for this phenomenon in new, small startups as anything.

dhughes• 12 years ago

About ten years ago I went to an IT job fair while I was in first year CS I had gone late in life so at 32 I felt I was finally doing the right thing. I thought maybe I could get some tips maybe even get a job even just apprentice/intern, anything.

Well I could have run around the job fair naked and on fire and I bet I still couldn't get anyone look at me.

One local CS professor not mine he was the other one at the Uni didn't even look up or acknowledge me. What's a hoot is he was older than me smoked weed and partied with his students, talk about having a mid-life crisis.

musesum2• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm an outlier; I'm a 55+ engineer working at a mobile startup. Maybe not; 20% of Google's employees are >55, according to a Kissmetrics chart. But, who knows maybe the 55+ crowd at Google consist of only geniuses and janitors.

I see an old/young tradeoff between pattern recognition and fluid intelligence.

Maybe why some older developers show less enthusiasm for the next really "awesome" idea is that is really isn't that new. Maybe the older developer has already learned the hard way the downside of the Dunning-Kruger affect, where: the more you know, the more you know what you don't know.

On the other side of the coin, maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past. Because the timing wasn't right. Because the audience wasn't ready or the infrastructure was premature. The secret of a good joke (and startups) is timing.

Perhaps some startups are best structured like a team sport; with both younger players at the peak of their brilliance and with older players that can both play and coach.

waveman2• 12 years ago

maybe older developers have a blind spot towards opportunities that have failed in the past

Yes. A lot of things have to come together for something to work. Something can fail many times before succeeding. A little irrational optimism can be a good thing. Hitting the ground running at the exact moment is very challenging.

musesum2• 12 years ago

Many times it is blind enthusiasm. My first exposure to that was being surrounded by VC's in 1983 who wanted to invest in our company. We had one of two project management systems, in the market, that worked on an IBM PC. By 1985, there were over 140 competitors. 140; that's a lot of developers hitting the ground running.

kevinalexbrown• 12 years ago

Perhaps the question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with age as much as we'd like. Let's assume for a minute that the age bias is important and useful. Why is that?

More importantly, what could we do to facilitate an increase in creativity or productivity or 'talent' over time? The fact that we don't has a huge impact on the kinds of things society achieve.

I don't think it's correct to just say "brains get less flexible" and give up. Most Nobel Prize winners (even in theoretical physics) tend to do their prize-winning work after this cutoff (I believe average is 40+). I suspect it has to do with the fact that scientists frequently have to shift the problems they're looking at as they go from grad student to postdoc, and grant to grant.

If I had to guess, I would say that it's not biological age, but time spent in a particular field that suggests how big a breakthrough you can make, because you get stuck thinking in a particular way. If young people have an audacity that lets them tackle new problems, we might focus on how to preserve that audacity as we get older by making it easier to switch fields.

jared314• 12 years ago

The question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with age as much as we'd like.

This question has been answered many times before. People are re-solving the exact same problems with a new framework, platform, or language every two to five years, sometimes less. The "solved problems" never seem to stay solved.

Alan Kay had a good point when he said the last 25 years (now 35 years) have been more about pop culture than actual engineering[1].

[1] https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523

ArkyBeagle• 12 years ago

I don't buy any of that. Look, there's a known thing here. It's called "the youth culture" brought to you by cigarette advertisers in the 1960s. It's now being continued and expanded on by the present class of online media companies. Well outlined in "Generation Like" on PBS frontline, it's clear that this is a continuation of a completely anti-demographically supportable belief system.

There's no empirical evidence for it. Yeah, there's a couple of half-hearted graphs of Einstein-level breakthroughs. But is that really the model here? Some guy builds a master work, a once-every-100-years theory; it's a bit much to expect him to top himself.

If we look at other fields, like painting, composing, writing, the results are more mixed. Software reminds me more of composing, really. Composers last forever.

Folks, it takes a long time to get good at this. 30 years before the mast and I'm still gaining speed.

lukeholder• 12 years ago

In my opinion I think it's just the free time to be able to put in the number of hours of deliberate practice. When you are younger you have far more time and flexibility to learn and experiment. In addition that time is spent on things that are seen to be new/better/modern and also come with a certain distain for doing things the way your predecessors did it. This mix gives the young person the flexibility of cutting corners and inventing/reinventing and by all appearance look 'smarter'.

I am now 30 with a wife 2 kids - I simply cannot put in the same number of hours of simply playing and practicing I did when I was 15-25. As much as I try to put in the hours, I need to face the fact I need to focus my time on them now. I also need to continue to earn a good living to give them everything I want for them (education, freedom). This means I am going to keep my 150k job doing things which may not be so innovative but I get to leave work at 5pm.

Whether that is a incorrect assumption I don't know, but from my perspective it feels true.

_greim_• 12 years ago

I have a theory. Competence increases with age. However, there's a fine line between older people not doing as many stupid things, versus older people not taking as many risks.

The perceived "talent" or "smartness" of younger people in the valley is simply the result of them taking more risks, which inevitably sometimes pay off. And risk-payoffs in the valley are disproportionately large at the high end, which skews the balance toward taking more risks.

For my theory to be true, silicon valley startups would be riddled by god-awful, marginally working code in the average case.

SomeCallMeTim6• 12 years ago

However, there's a fine line between older people not doing as many stupid things, versus older people not taking as many risks.

Yes, I can back this point up. I feel it.

I used to crank out demos in crazy short periods of time. Now I take longer, but when I'm done it's code with really solid engineering that I wouldn't be ashamed to continue using.

Because that "crank it out quick demo" always gets used. And you always end up suffering with it for months (or years).

And despite feeling like I'm taking "longer", I still tend to get things done faster than most developers.

SomeCallMeTim6• 12 years ago

The question we should be asking is why talent doesn't seem to increase with age as much as we'd like.

Wrong question, I think. Talent does increase with age, at least if the developers in question actually care enough to stay current. [1] I don't think it gets better by orders of magnitude, though -- the mythical 10x-20x programmer starts out as a 5x+ programmer. I know I was already at least that much better than most of my coworkers when I got my first day job.

What does happen is that developers are less willing to work crazy amounts of overtime just to impress management, and it's overtime bias that's the real problem.

I just blew away a team of two developers (both much younger) who had been working on a project for 9+ man weeks, catching up and passing them in less than two calendar weeks of development (on an implementation of the same code on another platform). And I did it in 30-40 hours per week. At a "traditional" company that rates performance by the number of hours each developer sits at their desks, I would have been the worst performer, and it's only the fact that I was doing almost exactly the same thing as the other team that made it clear I was getting more work done in less than half the work hours.

The corollary is that, as a young programmer, I cost the same as an idiot who couldn't put two lines of code together without creating three bugs, but I was already at least 5x as productive as that idiot (well, infinitely more productive than some developers I knew back then...). But now I have a track record and I make a lot more money; if I'm as good as 3-5 typical programmers, 3-5x the average starting salary is a bargain (considering reduced overhead, management, and increased chance of project completion because of reduced complexity).

But most companies don't recognize that, so they'd rather hire and manage 3-5 young developers for "cheap" who are willing to work lots of overtime. If they get at least one who's good, they may get more than their money's worth. Otherwise they're likely to end up with a project that's late, has tons of preventable security issues, and that is harder to extend than if they'd hired the expert.

That's what's broken. As to how to fix it: Would be wonderful if there were some verifiable way to rate programming skill, but until someone comes up with a system that can't be gamed, I don't see how.

[1] I've known many developers who effectively "give up" on learning new things at some point, and from that point on their skills rot (and/or they become managers). The ones who keep learning don't seem to hit a "skill wall", at least into their 50s, where my sample size drops precipitously.

phil21• 12 years ago

I think this more or less nails it. I'm not a programmer, but I have hired a few in my day. My best hire I've ever made was out of high school, and this kid blew away any developers of any age by 3-5x easily. He now is 15 years along his career (long since moved on - I can't afford him), and working for Google.

He's going to be great when he's 60 years old, because he's great at what he does, passionate, and lives for learning new technology.

The only difference is that yes, he will not be working those crazy hours.

You do have one mistake in your post though. While yes, a single developer who is 5x more productive than another programmer is worth more than 5x as much - for a small team that may not matter as much as you think. As a business owner, I would want to hire you, but I also need another developer who can "keep up" so I have business continuity should you quit/get hit by a bus or something. This is worth a considerable amount and I would not be willing to hire you vs. hiring 3 lesser developers to get the same job done. It would be too much of a risk.

x0x0• 12 years ago

You say talent, I say a lack of tolerance for bullshit and asshole driven development (ADD). ADD is the boss who waits until deadlines are nearly here to drop work on you (he said he does it because he thinks last second pressure creates better work. I think it creates unnecessary stress and sloppy work. Quit that job with a quickness). Or perhaps it's just the willingness to stand up and say, "Your bad planning is not my problem". Of course there are real emergencies occasionally but the vast majority of last second panics are completely preventable by competent people. Long hours shouldn't be a regular requirement.

mwfunk• 12 years ago

I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a hard time finding a job:

(1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism.

(2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more and more valuable because of their knowledge of the innards of one or more huge codebases that are specific to that company, they're likely to have a hard time finding another job doing something different that pays as much or more. It's very easy for people to settle into a routine for many years that doesn't necessarily carry over to another job. Someone in this situation might have to take a pay cut (maybe a big one) to start from square one doing something else at another company. This is an unfortunate reality of being a software developer, but it also isn't ageism.

(3) If a really young entrepreneur is hiring for their startup, and they haven't had the life experience to develop the maturity and insight to avoid being biased towards hiring people who are just like them, it is possible that they will favor a younger developer over an older developer based on age alone. They may not even be aware that they're doing it, they might just feel like all other things being equal, the younger developer is a better fit for the company. This could be ageism sometimes, and it's very unfortunate when it is.

(1) and (2) are the perils of having a long career as a developer. Employers who don't hire someone because of these reasons are making rational hiring decisions; they're not making decisions based on being biased against someone because of their age.

I don't know how often (3) happens though. I could see it being a problem in SF, where I've heard the job market is disproportionately composed of startups. I don't think it's like that in the South Bay (at least not to the same degree), where there are tons of large and established companies that are less likely to do this.

mgkimsal6• 12 years ago

"If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism."

Except.... I do see younger people getting hired who don't necessarily keep up with current technology. It may just be that they're ultimately cheaper, and it's just financial. But I do suspect that older devs are held to a higher standard on this front ("what? you're still using Rails 3? luddite!")

It's not necessarily rational unless the company holds all candidates to the same standards ("current with technology", for example).

tacoman• 12 years ago

What you describe in (2) doesn't just apply to software developers. It can also apply to sysadmin/SRE-type roles. I'm what passes for an "expert" at operating a very complicated yet unremarkable piece of software used by maybe 100 companies world wide. My salary has gone up rapidly over the last 5 years mostly because of my knowledge of this niche (and near EOL) software.

My next job likely will not be using this software so I'm doing my best to keep up with what's changing in IT generally. I even schedule a time once per week to work on a side project just to make sure my development skills stay sharp-ish. Despite the effort I put in, I expect that I'll likely have to take a pay cut if (when) I go to another job at a different company.

If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm actually not. This is just how it works I guess.

balls1873• 12 years ago

#3 is against the law in the US.

humanrebar• 12 years ago

It's not illegal to pass up a 39 year old because of his or her age.

WalterSear• 12 years ago

I've watched it happen, time and time again, however.

dinkumthinkum2• 12 years ago

What do you think 1) really is, though? Do you think "keeping up" with 100 different mvc frameworks that do roughly the same thing is "keeping up?" That seems to be what that code phrase is usually used to mean. Are younger programmers not as easily accused of this or worse than not keeping, not knowing enough fundamentals? The whole notion of keeping up with technology change in programming contexts sometimes seem silly to me. Is it really that big of a change that you can start to do with JavaScript web apps what you could do 20 years ago?

tluyben2• 12 years ago

You are right, but unfortunately some of the misinformation (or maybe it was like that in the beginning?) about the Google hiring process made it to other companies, so the hiring process focusses on a lot of detailed knowledge about Rails 4 even though you may have a ton of Rails 2 experience and after that you did 5 years of full-time Lift, you might still not get the job because you are not 'current'. I think it's rather a lot of bullshit and actually the reverse is true as well; I see programmers who learned and used a specific thing, like Rails 4 having issues picking up anything else well. Yet people hire them because they 'kept up'. Have fun with that in a few years :)

mgkimsal6• 12 years ago

How much overlap is there between the types of companies in this article and the typical "we can't find anyone qualified to hire!" company? I suspect it's not total, but there's probably some overlap.

I can't wait until these 22 year olds of today hit their 40s and they reap what they've sown.

Zuckerburg said "younger people are just smarter"? Certainly there's a degree of hubris in youth that you don't lose without experiences of failure and compromise. But that's usually not "smarts" - just youth. I've had similar encounters with people where I've been able to guess parts of their business (and failures), and it's because I've already had my own.

One example - pardon the long rant...

I did a bit of prototyping with some college students about 15 months ago. Core idea was "coursera/udacity for medical students" - something like that. Being medical students, they saw a lack of useful material focusing on them, and wanted to fill that niche. "You'll have trouble getting content, and will likely run in to IP issues with professors and universities". I said this within the first 10 minutes of meeting them. "Oh no, we've already got people lined up, ready to create content," was the reply.

That intrigued me, because content is the hardest part. We met again, and again, and I did a small (small - like weekend prototype) set of code to let people upload instruction content based on the structure we'd laid out. Then.... nothing. Days to weeks to months... Nothing. What happened? They mistook "hey, great idea! yeah, I'll do it" sort of nice/polite feedback as real commitment. The few instructors who actually were interested in going further discovered they had to clear their involvement with their respective universities, as it seemed to constitute teaching and would conflict with their existing contracts (IIRC it could have been worked out with money/licensing, but there was no revenue at this point).

So... months later after a lot of legwork on their end, they came to the conclusion that I'd come to after 10 minutes. That's not to say "Ha, I was right, dumb idea" - the idea will happen, imo. They just sort of ignored me - I was an 'outsider' - they 'knew the space', etc. I'm the old guy who's not at university - how could I possibly know what student life is like now, in 2012? They could have saved themselves a lot of time by focusing on the issues I'd identified up front (which... was not just tooting my horn here - an older colleague identified the same issues on the same initial evening meeting).

But hey, "younger people are just smarter," right? Nothing is so cut and dried. Smarter people are smarter, energetic people are energetic, etc. There are 50 year olds that run rings around many 25 year olds that I know, both physically and activity-wise.

kansface2• 12 years ago

I don't think this anecdote really illustrates your point. One day, some naive kid will actually be stupid enough to solve this problem. For that matter, I would guess a large number of highly successful startups solve exactly these sorts of problems. pg calls these schlep problems- http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html. I agree, this is not a cut and dry space.

msandford• 12 years ago

Sure, that's true. But he'll actually DO THE WORK rather than simply HOPING others will do it for him. AirBnB founders went around doing non-scalable things. The founders of the aforementioned company did not. So in a way the ancient, decrepit person was right. Maybe not exactly, but sorta.

mgkimsal6• 12 years ago

But see... in my view, the work involved is not contacting people saying "would you write content for this?". I can't say I was entirely naive, but I trusted them too much early on that they understood my concerns - they didn't.

In this case, if you want 50 well-respected professors, you have to go out of your way to identify 100, then identify potential concerns (licensing issues with existing publishers and universities) and solve that problem. Building a website for people to upload slideshows and movies is a solved problem (hundreds of times over). Building a process to extract out valuable content from people who would otherwise not create digital content, then monetize that, that is not at all a solved problem, at least in many verticals.

Yes, someday, someone's going to crack this. I really don't think it'll be "some naive kid". The way you're saying it makes it sound like it's the "naiveté" which is the magic potion in all this (gosh he just didn't know what he didn't know and just 'made it happen'). That's a nice narrative, and does happen now and then - people win the lottery now and then too. But by and large it doesn't happen that way.

Certainly this space will get solved - probably in the next few years - but it'll be a licensing deal between the larger publishers and universities and someone who builds a platform for them to generate revenue from these captive audiences.

Of course, I might be 100% wrong, but judging by the number of students I talk to with "why isn't there a ..." ideas, I don't think so. most of the time the reason there isn't a good FOO when you're in the education world (as a student or teacher) it's because there's policies and purchasing procedures which prohibit it, not because someone hasn't thought of the idea yet.

jaimebuelta• 12 years ago

I wonder how much of the "younger people are just smarter" Zuckemberg quote is he actually thinking that and how much is "People here in Springfield really know how to rock!"

mgkimsal6• 12 years ago

Good reference! Point taken :)

Thrymr• 12 years ago

It has happened before. A 60s trope was "Don't trust anyone over 30" [1]. The Who sang "Hope I die before I get old" in 1965 (Pete Townsend is now 70, Roger Daltry 68).

[1] http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-04-06/article/...

pbiggar2• 12 years ago

More for the rest of us. If you're too old for most startups to look twice at your resume, apply to CircleCI: https://circleci.com/jobs. We value experience, and our backend is even written in Lisp [1].

[1] As we all know, all greybeards use Lisp ;)

jgrant272• 12 years ago

Nice !

gaadd332• 12 years ago

Do you guys use Weblocks or Clack or something similar?

pbiggar2• 12 years ago

We use Clojure (I'm informed that Lips-with-a-capital-L might mean something different than that, in which case I apologize for my lack of purity and bad nomenclature.)

leccine• 12 years ago

Young people just smarter. Also, less experienced this is why they re-invent hot water every day (hello node.js). I have seen "young people" fail countless time because they could not get away from the "being in the Silicon valley, I must be super smart and I am always right" attitude. The most performant techie people are 30+ with significant relevant experience, they are not getting horny about a useless new technology over a blog post, understand the stack all the way, fluent in their language(s) and can make great decisions based on their experience (wisdom) and knowledge. The CEOs in their mid 20s are guys, nobody will remember maybe 1 out of 100 makes it to history the rest is just going to lead a mediocre company and quit when they realize that the IPO won't get them anywhere (if they make it to the IPO at all). As Paul Graham pointed out regarding LISP, using something that your competitors don't understand gives you an edge. Apply the same to hiring, and get some 30+ guys on your team now! Will ya?!?!?! :)

kabdib• 12 years ago

Older workers, while more experienced, are also more expensive. You can't hire a 40 or 50 yo hacker for what you can pay someone a few years out of college.

On the other hand there is a basic cost to each employee regardless of salary, so the higher pay is not proportionally as high as comparing salaries.

On the gripping hand, older employees often have families, who incur more expense for health care and so on. You can expect older people to have health issues on their own, too. This is a fairly big deal in the US, where the health care payment system is broken.

k2xl3• 12 years ago

Oh please. This article is just ridiculous. I find it hard to sympathize with any of the characters or to find any semblance of truth in anything that was presented.

Someone gave the same argument to me regarding Y Combinator - They only invest in 22-28 year olds... Which is statistically probably accurate, but here's a question that people don't think about: What do you think the average age of someone who applies to YC is?

The "discrimination" arguments toward older developers made me laugh. The sad thing about this article is that it seems personal - these specific guys that are mentioned were likely just not able to pitch their idea effectively, but blame it on the young kids "seducing" VCs with their "baby faces" and "fresh college degrees."

What, do they think that VC's just go, "Oh you sort of LOOK like Mark Zuckerberg. Take my money."

Just because someone says they "Love your idea" and that it is "Better than others they've seen" doesn't mean anything unless they write a check. My past startups pitched VCs who said this all the time (I was in my early 20s btw) - I used to think we were being discriminated for being young!

Btw, who do you think has a better chance of landing a deal with a large company - a 23 year old fresh out of college or a 50 year old with 20 years of business experience? Do you think that VC's are oblivious to that fact?

"He figured it was only a matter of time before nCrypted Cloud made them both very, very rich. The only thing they were up against was 50 years of accumulated bias."

LOL @ that statement. I've heard the same kind of statement countless times from startup founders of ALL ages.

gammarator• 12 years ago

What, do they think that VC's just go, "Oh you sort of LOOK like Mark Zuckerberg. Take my money."

It's a reference to something pg said about himself:

"""And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” """

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-sili...

k2xl3• 12 years ago

That isn't aegism, that's someone who "looks" like Zuckerberg. Lots of people who look like Bill Gates gets funded too.

And there's a difference between investing 15K in a startup and 1M+. I highly doubt anyone invests millions of dollars because a founder looks "young"

codeonfire• 12 years ago

Can you really expect VC's not to be assholes? I think maybe the article is a little quick to play the age card in regards to the example give. Just because someone acts like an asshole and acts disinterested doesn't mean they're not interested. And, there are other ways to start a business. If someone doesn't like older people, people with kids and families, fuck 'em. Find something else.

tiler• 12 years ago

It could just be the case that we are at a point on the programming timeline where much of the work done by the deeply technical grey-bearded wizards from the past few decades has been abstracted away into APIs, programming languages, and design methodologies. These tools give people who have programming skills the oppourtunity to sacrifice a few months learning them to gain the creative power that not too long ago may have taken years. So this is not a period of time where the older programmers can rest on their laurels.

What we consider very basic geometry calculations today, so trivial we teach them in elementary school, would be beyond the capabilities of even some of the fabeled Ancient Greek Geometers. Again, this is only because many generations of mathematicians have refined and abstracted away much of the detail that at one point was necessary to perform these now trivial computations.

awt• 12 years ago

After a certain point, if you've made enough friends, you will likely never have to interview for a position again unless you want to. Interviewing is where ageism is probably most pernicious, and that process can be avoided.

sgustard• 12 years ago

The issue from the kids' viewpoint is this: They expect to be rich and retired in ten years. Anyone still working after that point must have failed in some way, and they don't want to spend their time at work staring into the eyes of their aging feeble counterpart who still has to schlep into the office every day.

jayd16• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm just some young punk but I have a clear picture of the "old man" engineer I don't enjoy working with. I will say when you were born has very little to do with what makes you that old man, though.

I'd say its the "I'm too old for this shit", attitude. If you want to get in early and leave early that's fine but If you don't put in extra hours, there will be decisions made when everyone else is in the office and you went home. Then you bitch and moan like its ageism but they're asking the team to conform to their hours and that's just not going to happen.

Plus there are plenty of people who have the "I've been doing it this way for XYZ." Don't tell me innovation stopped when you got the Sr. in your title. If you're coding in Java and refuse to type your collections, I hate you.

If you click with the team and have gray hair, I'll love to learn from you.

jgrant272• 12 years ago

Youth is wasted on the young. My younger self included.

collyw4• 12 years ago

I had a great time.

graycat2• 12 years ago

As best as I can see from Silicon Valley (SV) VCs, what they really like is not youth, age, ideas, or advanced technology but 'traction'.

If SV makes mistakes on age, then maybe they invest too much in very young entrepreneurs. One cynical reason is that people so young can be easier to manipulate. If they have a great business but are doing a poor job managing it, then the VCs can bring in one of their buddies as CEO; apparently in the past this was more common and, really, an intended act.

One SV firm wrote me, "We would not consider investing in anything like your project before you have 100,000 unique visitors a month."

Okay. Suppose 100,000 different people come to my site, on average each person comes 5 times, on average each time they come they see 8 Web pages with 5 ads per page, and suppose I get paid $2 per 1000 ads displayed. Then my monthly revenue would be

100,000 * 5 * 8 * 5 * 2 / 1000 = 40,000

dollars. Then why the heck would I take their term sheet where I would suddenly go from owning 100% of my company to owning 0% of it with some chance of getting back to maybe 60% on a four year vesting schedule, when during those four years the VCs could fire me for any reason or no reason and, really, just take all of my company the day after I cash their check.

And, my company is based on some technical work, and as the company grows I will need to do more technical work. Then a Board would need to approve the budgets for the technical work but would not understand that work. So, the Board would be reluctant to approve the budgets and, more generally, would want to exercise their 'fiduciary' responsibility to 'control' the company. They would kill all prospects of growth for the technology of the company. VCs don't always do this and clearly have not done that for Google, but the VCs write their agreements so that they have the power to do such things.

The solution of the two entrepreneurs in the article is to (1) see a suitable problem, (2) think of a good solution, (3) write the software to implement their solution, (4) go live by having the software run on a Web site or selling it, say, as an app. They should think of (1) and (2) so that they can get to, say, $40,000 a month in revenue just with their own checkbooks.

For the VCs, from a Fred Wilson post at AVC.com some months ago, the average ROI is poor, really, just awful. So, Darwin will be along shortly, and the ranks of the VCs will thin out.

Net, the VCs will have to make money or do something else. If they make money, then their LPs will continue to invest and it will be a little foolish to say that the VCs are making mistakes.

Recently Fred Wilson had a lecture on 10 ways for an entrepreneur to be their own boss and emphasized that getting venture capital is not nearly the only way.

My background in doing projects was from US DoD work and also academic research. From those two, I have had to conclude that VCs do projects in very different ways. While I do believe that VCs are making some big mistakes, some of the VCs are making money. Maybe Benchmark, Sequoia, USV, and a few more are making money.

joesmo2• 12 years ago

In addition to specific industry issues, ageism in tech in the US seems to be reflective of the wider culture at large here. Older people in the US generally are not respected and their experience and contributions are generally neglected. The "stick them in a nursing home" attitude is extremely common, but even before it gets to that point, disrespect for the elderly is common and is expressed in attitude and culture. Why would Silicon Valley be any different? In fact, considering the amount of young people in SV, I would expect this to manifest itself there the most. In a culture that generally has no respect for its elders, a culture that considers most elders superfluous, why would anyone expect something different?

johnny99• 12 years ago

Given the insane war for talent in SV, the idea of a neglected pool of highly competent engineers should cause a stampede to unearth them. It certainly planted a seed in my mind.

I wonder if ageism is driven in part by social media. Us olds seem to be less present on Github/Stack/Twitter/etc (HN, oddly, seems a bit of an exception--I love the posts about historical computing). Maybe reduced visibility equates to reduced opportunity.

kokey• 12 years ago

I think ageism is only an issue for the parts of the technology industry that's attractive to young people. There are also the other massive parts of the technology industry that's simply less visible or interesting to young people because it's not 'cool', like in banking, aviation and defense. A multinational bank's IT arm easily employ the same number of people than, say, Apple. The problems these industries face are complex and challenging. These are industries where experience counts. I see being 45 and wanting to work in a Silicon Valley internet startup industry being a bit like being a 45 year old who wants to try make it in the chart music industry. You'll need that botox.

balls1873• 12 years ago

Hearing disparaging remarks about "greybeards" pisses me off something fierce.

Much of my early career success can be attributed to working with many senior engineers who taught me a lot very quickly, given their knowledge and experience.

There is also reverence/nostalgia for "pioneers" in my field. It's fun to tease them about punchcards, but it's also great to hear their stories about their experiences when they first started as programmers.

Then again I'm 33 so my opinion no longer matters.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

The ageism culture doesn't come from programmers. Young engineers (I am one) venerate the badass older programmers. It comes from the business people who've colonized us.

Business is full of degenerate narcissists, and the one thing narcissists can't stand is age, though it awaits us all.

Because we've been colonized in recent years-- the R&D culture that used to characterize programming has been replaced by closed allocation and commoditization and project-management bullshit-- by business people we've lost our culture, and they've imposed theirs on us. That's where the age discrimination comes from.

Ageism is also to their benefit because it puts this shitty time pressure on the young, encouraging them to work ridiculous hours and make unreasonable sacrifices that they think will help their careers (but often do the opposite). Whether young or old, we all get screwed by the ageism culture. Young people get abused because they're convinced that opportunities will dry out in 5-15 years, and older people get demoralized and pushed out of the industry for no good reason.

The best way to fight it is to point out the dynamic that causes ageism: chickenhawking. Read this-- http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th... -- and be enlightened. The truth about what is behind ageism is embarrassing to the purveyors of it, and knowledge should be multiplied.

untilHellbanned• 12 years ago

chickenhawking is spot on.

kapilkale• 12 years ago

If the ageism has no merits, shouldn't the problem self-correct due to the arbitrage opportunity it creates?

vegustui• 12 years ago

Nope, we do't live in a free market. Eg: some have access to capital while others don't.

rasengan0• 12 years ago

Dude, this long term strategy sounds too mature: "By contrast, he says, economies that embrace the Silicon Valley model writ large—throwing massive amounts of money at highly speculative investments—are suspiciously bubble-prone."

HypeTsu• 12 years ago

Experience is not a matter of age, as it is not a matter of time. One need not be fooled by the elder who claims 20 years of experience, when in fact he has 1 year of experience repeated 20 times. That is why a teenager can possibly have the same experience as his middle aged counterpart.

Innovation is not a matter of age either. It's mostly about observance and imagination which are qualities that can either increase with age, if one nurtures it, or diminish with age if one is unaware.

That is to say; both experience and innovation are NOT age related.

As human beings, we cannot help but be influenced by prevailing outlook in our immediate social circles, and the media we're exposed to. It is our responsibility to be aware of this bias, and find THAT WHICH transcends age.

c0mpute• 12 years ago

Personally, my experience in the valley (being hired as well hiring people) has been not been guided by age. My experience has been with the startup since it was at 50 member to well over 100 now.

I am in early 30s, which means I am mostly interviewing for senior engineering position. I have been part of teams where we have made offers to several folks older than I am for similar or higher position. This is the only time when age does come up for discussion (is he really qualified to be a senior or not?)

However, some patterns I do notice from time to time are:

- Younger folks are more eager at times to do more.

- Their enthusiasm also comes with quality of work that needs some additional care. But, it is critical we mentor them during these times.

- Older folks are generally more clear on what they want to work and how they want to solve a problem. Experience most likely.

- The really bad situation to be in is when some of the older (senior) folks don't drive and take initiatives and just wade through. With someone senior you want them to be there to mentor, help, guide, keep an eye out on many things, but we have seen a few senior folks who don't make that effort - This is probably the #1 problem I have seen in teams. A sense of agility is almost vital.

- I have seen the same lack of "drive" amongst some younger devs as well.

- End of the day, its not age, its almost the subject scale of how passionate they are about their work that has worked for us. Old/young is really irrelevant.

bsder3• 12 years ago

There are two perceived problems with hiring older programmers:

1) Older programmers won't put up with bullshit. They expect to have reasonable goals, be listened to, be compensated fairly, and have a reasonable schedule. They've been around the block enough to identify bullshit and will leave when it starts getting too high.

2) Older programmers really don't always understand the "cool" social crap that teenagers are into this year (for good reason--most of it is garbage). Unfortunately, most of what Silicon Valley is interested in is "cool" social crap so that they can get a big buzz and flip the company to Google or Facebook.

Funnily enough, companies that value that silly thing known as "profit" are quite happy to hire older programmers. It's just a function of Silicon Valley not believing in profit that is causing the ageism.

Tohhou• 12 years ago

Then the "problem" should be self correcting assuming the companies which make money survive (which they do), and those which don't focus on making money evaporate (which they do). Or maybe it's not a "problem" if only some companies are doing it, because they value things which the older people don't have interest in, and so the older people self select themselves out by choice.

Is there a list of companies which value profit so the people who complain about the "problem" (from companies most likely to not be around after too long) can go work for them?

hrktb• 12 years ago

Then the "problem" should be self correcting assuming the companies which make money survive (which they do)

This derails in reality because you'll have companies making money but bullshitting their employees to save most of it. You don't need the best of the best programmers to have a shippable product, and even if such a company is only mildly profitable, keeping the profits at the top makes it a good place for stake holders.

elohesra• 12 years ago

I'd check wealthy corporations by this logic, and check whether the average age of programming staff is higher than in SV.

It would certainly match up with my experience in London, where it seemed that a lot of the programmers over the age of 30 were working for large, established finance companies. The age of programmers around the 'Silicon Roundabout' startups tends to skew a lot closer to mid 20s.

makomk• 12 years ago

It's not going to be self-correcting because - at least for startups - the VC companies providing the funds also believe that older programmers are no good, and companies aren't going to survive very well if they run out of funding. Plus, once companies get past the VC stage, this is likely to be deeply embedded in corporate culture and they'll be at the point where they're established enough that they can do worse than the competition and still succeed.

sunir• 12 years ago

B2B software vales profit and only profit. A cursory list:

http://directory.thesmallbusinessweb.com

yeukhon• 12 years ago

What is this social crap we are talking about? Are you referring to social network applications?

Cthulhu_2• 12 years ago

"I just committed #code on #master! #yolo!"

jes5199• 12 years ago

My perception is that there are a lot of apps right now designed to solve the problem of "please make it less awkward for me to meet strangers." Bizarrely, they're converging on the Tinder interaction - just look at their faces and no other information and note whether you approve of them - WHICH IS WHAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE IN THE BAR ALREADY WITHOUT YOUR PHONE.

Dale12• 12 years ago

Point 1 == Nail hit firmly on head! I'm 31 and far more streetwise than I was 10/15 years ago. Youngsters tend to get excited quickly and you can make them do all sorts of cool things, working for free, no contracts, perpetual internships etc etc.

It seems everyone these days is a "founder" of something. I own sites that do things these youngsters can't do (Turn a profit) but I've never, not for one moment ever thought I was a founder of something great, just trying to earn a living!

I agree with the companies that believe in profit thing. Once you strip out the happy clappy, social crud employers just want people who can help them turn a profit.

benihana• 12 years ago

I'm also 31, and I don't think this article is talking about us. I think it's talking about people who are 15-20 years older than us.

I do agree that I am way more experienced, knowledgeable, and have a much more healthy and mature perspective on business and software engineering than I did when I was 22.

sulam• 12 years ago

The author of this piece contacted me and at least two other co-workers of mine who are identifiably over 40 asking us to comment on this subject. I told him I thought there is a simple mathematical reason why the industry skews young -- we are hiring as rapidly as we can in most cases. Of course, as is too common in journalism, his story was already built and he was only searching for confirmation of it.

What's the distribution of software engineers by decade across a 40-year range? Is anyone here willing to argue that it's completely flat? Of course not, there are far more SWEs in their 20's than in their 60's.

I have never once had my age be an issue at work or in an interview. My resume clearly states my work experience, and goes back 20 years. I don't have to hide anything, and I don't expect I ever will. Am I willing to believe there are employers out there who try to discriminate by age? Of course there are, just like there are fraudulent companies you could work for, sexist assholes you could work for, etc.

None of these matter because you don't have to work for these people. As a competent engineer your skills are in demand, and you get to pick where you'd like to work. If you aren't a competent engineer, no amount of plastic surgery will get you hired, and please stop using your age as an excuse.

jroseattle• 12 years ago

I've been hiring for our engineering team recently, and for us ageism is a very real thing that we try to combat. But it's not what one might expect. We're building a team of experienced engineers, and experience is key. Zuckerberg made his comment in 2007, but I bet he has highly refined his thinking since then.

We look at engineer hiring to determine what's valuable, and what's teachable. Do we want our engineers to be current? Yes, but only reasonably so. Anyone who has been around long enough will recognize that most currently popular technologies in use as tools of the trade are simply iterations on ideas that have existed for a long time. Any individual who thinks we're in the dawn of some amazing age where the tools are only understood by a certain generation is, for lack of a better word, foolish.

So, for us being current is really just status at a point-in-time. It's entirely teachable (or better yet, learnable.) But what's valuable? Understanding your trade is important to us, but having real experiences under your belt is super-critical.

Have you ever run a large-scale operation where your code was mission-critical? That's important to us. Ever been responsible for deployment that required zero downtime? That's important. Ever had to ship code and the difference between success and failure meant revenue and jobs? That's important. Ever actually done more than one thing besides {web/mobile/admin/etc.}? That's important.

So, we try to combat ageism by ensuring we give young folks a chance. Not everyone gets that opportunity, but we do so sparingly when we feel such an investment is worth our time, money and effort.

taude• 12 years ago

Wise thoughts here, especially on "reasonably current" and teachable.. I share similar characteristics in what I look for in engineering hires, especially when certain aspects of the tech landscape change so quickly. Especially around "programming language" requirements: I don't really care if you know Ruby/python/PHP/JAVA so much as you've worked in a high-up time scalable environment, working in large code bases, with solid tech design chops, you'll fill in the 'language' requirement pretty quickly if you're actually the right type of person to hire. Even more so if you're motivated and have a strong desire to work with our tech stack...

hartator• 12 years ago

I am hearing a lot of stories about why youngster are overrated but not really a lot the other way around.

Maybe it's an unpopular opinion here.

In reality, young people are less paid than older counterparts in almost every economic sectors for the same skills. I mean that'a known truth! Silicon valley is the opposite? Good for the them.

I think there is 2 strong biases against older founders that might explain the situation:

1) The man is not a programmer and don't have a feeling for high tech stuff. I know founders here in Paris in their forties. They are starting web startups while not even knowing how to connect to wifi! But because they are old and have connections, they get funding! You are telling me in the valley it is the exact opposite? It seems just fair to me!

2) The man is a programmer and a good one. In their forties, you might expect him to make something like 350k and have a good title like CTO or lead developer. Why he will risk everything to start a new company? I can understand why people feels it's odd. Maybe there is a 1:20 odds to make it so he must aim for at least $7m to make any financial sense to him. Or maybe he is not a good programmer.

valleyer• 12 years ago

In their forties, you might expect him to make something like 350k and have a good title like CTO or lead developer.

What? There are quite obviously not as many CTO or "lead developer" positions as there are junior engineering positions. So why are you assuming that everyone that old must have such a great job?

skrebbel2• 12 years ago

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40.

When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over 40. His CV showed that he had spent most of his time building boring information systems for government agencies. This did not feel cool and startuppy at all. Also, he's gray-haired and he looks a bit dorky. We really liked him in person though, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, so we hired him anyway.

Only a few weeks later, I was already certain that he was the best hire we made up until now. Hypothetically, when forced, I would fire any two other team members to be able to keep him on the team (and he's on only half weeks). He's experienced, very much down to business, he cuts through the crap and through technical fads, and currently ensures that we're building the most lean and simple backend that I've ever seen. In a programming language that he's never seen before, and with a database engine that he's never used before.

For me, the general takeaway was that the wisdom to "not only hire copies of yourself" is very true indeed. More specifically, "older" guys (for tech industry standards) often have a lot more fundamental skills to bring to the table than perfect command of this year's technologie du jour.

Hire older people!

mgkimsal6• 12 years ago

As an older person, I commend you for looking past your comfort zone. Your anecdote certainly doesn't mean that all old people are better developers, but I tell people that I've already made most of my mistakes 10-15 years ago on other peoples' projects. Gets a bit of a chuckle, but it's reality - we all make mistakes when learning.

I just did a prototype demo for someone - took about 6 hours - and it was more fully functional than something they'd had a team of people working on for weeks. It's rare that there's that much of a difference, and to be fair there were weeks of communication and discovery going on that I didn't have to deal with. But the other team was also using an older PHP framework which they were painfully not comfortable with (I later found out mandated for bad reasons). Judging by their code, they wouldn't have been comfortable in any framework, but that's another story.

This is far less about how great I am, and more about understanding common problem domains, knowing your tools, knowing when it's OK to cut corners and when not to, and how best to communicate with people. Some of that comes with passion and dedication, but some of it only really comes over time, and the more the better, usually combined with the passion and/or dedication for maximum results.

not_paul_graham• 12 years ago

But are you based in SF [1]? I think that this article is more specific to the west coast tech scene in the United States.

[1] Your profile indicates that you might be based out of Europe.

skrebbel2• 12 years ago

Indeed, I'm Dutch and based in the Netherlands. So is the startup in question.

The problem highlighted by the article is relatively SF-specific indeed, but you see the same vibe in Dutch startups (less so in older tech businesses here, but there it's just that 50 is considered old instead of 40 - the difference isn't that big).

I don't see how that makes the anecdote less strong though. Why wouldn't there be similarly competent 40+ year old people in SF? I feel that startups that are open to hiring older people in a climate like the one described in this article have a competitive advantage on the job market. It makes me anecdote only more applicable to SF, not less.

cookiecaper2• 12 years ago

Even 30 is low. You know that in all other industries, a person in their 30s is still early in their career, right? You don't start getting the respect of being a season pro until you're in your 40s at least.

Personally I've had great respect for the 50+ yr old programmers that've worked on modern teams with me. They've always been great augmentations, and I prefer to hire more experienced people where possible, especially if that experience predates the web.

hnnewguy• 12 years ago

Hire older people!

This is a great anecdote, though I don't fully understand why it surprises people.

Most people in their early 20s are still "kids", both socially and work-experience-wise. Give me a hungry 30+ any day.

njharman2• 12 years ago

why it surprises people

It surprises young people. 30+ isn't all that old.

leothekim2• 12 years ago

s/older/experienced/. Grey hair does not engender wisdom.

cookiecaper2• 12 years ago

There's a strong correlation that shouldn't be hard to figure out. You're right that it's not necessarily equivalent, but I don't think anyone posited that gray hair automatically equals masterful programming ability.

tripzilch• 12 years ago

What about grey comments?

craigyk• 12 years ago

The more I think about it, ageism is mostly about reducing perceived costs: Older people have families, more experience (in general), demand higher salaries, and are less likely to put in crazy hours. They can still totally be worth it.

analog31• 12 years ago

I'd be interested in knowing if the older workers who avoid crazy hours are the same ones who avoided crazy hours when they were younger.

semerda• 12 years ago

Ditto. Had the exact same experience. Half my team were a lot older (50s and 2 x 40s) than me and the other half younger. We ran leaner and meaner then the other engineering teams in the company. Also learnt a lot from them myself and age never even creeped up as a barrier. Matter of fact I can't even recall thinking differently of them apart from how awesome & reliable they were.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

tl;dr: immature companies have immature staffing policies.

It's not even remarkable, and may have nothing to do with ageism, although that will be the effective result if it concerns large parts of an industry. Just like the sexism and racism of tech, it's mostly about hiring policies mirroring the identity of the companies and the people who founded them.

It doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed as a serious issue, because it hampers the industry and is detrimental to society, but in the long run, those companies will adapt or die.

LeicaLatte• 12 years ago

Tech is already so divisive against women. Now we are alienating older men too? This is suicidal for our industry.

alphadevx• 12 years ago

Recently I interviewed a candidate, who upon meeting me said "Oh, I was expecting somebody older". It seems it cuts both ways: if you are a manager you are supposed to appear "older", otherwise some people have difficulty reporting into you.

zacinbusiness2• 12 years ago

It's stories like this that make me hope that I will bust out a killer app within the next year or two. As a programmer I've been hacking at code since my late teens, just like most devs, but I never took it seriously until about 5 years ago. And I've been designing my app for 2 years now and I think it's almost ready to put into development. But I don't want to release a piece of junk, and yet I also don't want someone to release it before I can finish.

jmd_• 12 years ago

I'm curious when I read these articles: does this also mean making a career switch, or maybe attempting to start a career, in programming post 30 (with or without a degree) is incredibly improbable? Does that ring true to people here?

pmcpinto• 12 years ago

I have the same question and unfortunately seems that is true

krapp• 12 years ago

As one of those people, I really hope not. But then I wasn't planning on touching SV with a ten foot pole anyway. I suspect outside the bubble where the culture demands and obsesses over youth, it doesn't matter as much.

eadlam• 12 years ago

Isn't it obvious that adolescent startup founders wouldn't want to hire adults? That would be a complete role reversal of their entirely lifes experience with adults.

I'm also not surprised that investors are biased. As a group, they are just people with money. That feature doesn't preclude them from being unreasonable in the way (one would hope) being an engineer implies a certain level of objective rationality...

What does surprise me is the fear that is apparently spreading among aging engineers. You didn't get where you are by being afraid. Every problem you've ever solved proves your ability to bend systems to your will. You design your own fate. Don't make yourself vulnerable by believing anything else.

</rant>

On a more practical note, if college students had more opportunity to team up with older professionals on small co-owned projects, I think that would go a long way toward bridging the gap. Exposure is key. That's like, behavior therapy 101.

Cenfath• 12 years ago

"Don't trust anyone over 30."

The denizens of VCastan propagate this nonsense like it is a moral imperative shouted from the mountain top. One day those very denizens will be over 30, and at that time it will be a completely different story.

davidgerard2• 12 years ago

Someone with decades of experience could be your competitive advantage.

(I'm also thinking of a friend whose kids have grown up and the house is paid off, so she and her husband are now looking around the startup scene, because they can actually take a pile of risks again.)

Hire old people! They know stuff!

(CoI: I'm 47 :-) )

seanccox• 12 years ago

TL;DR: Kids in their 20s can be shallow and superficial, focusing on appearances rather than qualifications or demonstrated abilities. Given wealth and power, they become ageist despots.

For some companies, I'm sure hiring Socrates, rather than Alexander, is more productive.

Beliavsky• 12 years ago

Considerable research has found that fluid intelligence declines with age. There is a 2006 paper "Age differences in fluid intelligence: Contributions of general slowing and frontal decline".

We know that 50-year-olds are not as strong physically as 20-year-olds. The brain is an organ, and it would be surprising if every part of the body except the brain worked less well as one aged.

MCarusi• 12 years ago

One of the most common theories floated around about why younger programmers are so "preferred" is that older programmers tend to get stuck doing things a certain way or not adapting to new languages or programming paradigms.

The big issue is that you see this with people in any profession, and of any age. People naturally stick with what's comfortable to them, even in their twenties. It could be that tech is such a rapidly changing field that this gets so much attention, but applying this to a certain age demographic in a single profession is only doing tech a disservice.

nilkn• 12 years ago

I think the greatest thing about older developers is that they understand bureaucracy and office politics. The truth is that there's more to being a great developer than just writing code with your headphones on. Some of my bigger productivity gains have been from learning how to hustle in the office. That said, I'm still pretty young and I feel I have a considerable amount to learn, both technically and professionally.

As an example, during my first year out of college, I often found myself waiting upwards of a week for someone else to get me something I needed to complete one of my tasks. I didn't know the right way to prod a coworker--or in this case, actually, boss--to get you what you need so you can get stuff done. Examples like that abound.

nickbauman• 12 years ago

I'm over 40. I feel like I'm doing the best work of my life right now. Maybe that's an indictment of my past work, but until the last few years, I wasn't doing anything with ML, with AI/Planning or Operations Research, Expert Systems, hardware-software interfaces etc. Now I'm doing those things. I was doing LoB software mostly: moving data from a database into a screen and back again.

In order to do new kinds of work, I had to turn down jobs for the boring stuff I knew I could do. I chose to work on stuff that scared me.

So: work on things that scare you. Things that you find mysterious. Things where the machine teaches YOU, not the other way around.

Sooner than later.

super_mario• 12 years ago

Agism? I don't think so. I have over 20 years of "real world" (who counts any more) experience (cut my teeth in 6502 assembler at age 10) and the real truth is that I am too expensive, and not too old for majority of companies out there let alone startups.

Take your average 20 something year old hot shot highly sought after programmer, well I make 3 times as much as him. As soon as that little tidbit of information is out of the bag, I'm suddenly "too old" or would not be "good cultural fit" for the budding startup.

Sad thing is, it's true. Most of the companies these days are not really solving hard core problems any more and don't really need someone of my level of expertise and skills (how many are in the guts of an OS, databasse or compiler, or need their server performance insanely tight). Most are hoping to disrupt Facebook or Twitter, and for that "social" stuff kids who don't know what they are worth are better suited anyway.

delinka• 12 years ago

"For as long as he can remember, all he ever wanted to do was to build a start-up that would go public..."

Me, too! I just don't pout publicly about my sad fortune. Instead I take a job, using my decades of experience, doing interesting things.

vijayr• 12 years ago

This is a very depressing read. I can understand in industries like modeling, acting etc but in tech?

zwieback• 12 years ago

The Andreessen quote "You can't start designing bridges at 10" sums up another problem nicely: the young, talented or not, may be wasting their youth on ultimately meaningless projects while the hard engineering disciplines are starved of fresh talent.

socrates1998• 12 years ago

As a person going through a career change, ageism is something I am sort of concerned with. If it takes me a few years to become "good" at what I am doing, I am really pushing being considered "old" in the tech industry.

However, I really think it is a money issue that is subconsciously present in how the tech industry hires or funds people. It's much cheaper to hire/fund a 23 year old than it is a 33 year old.

23 year olds negotiate a lot worse. They are easier to manipulate and take advantage of. You can convince a 23 year old to take a cut in salary for "huge potential". A 33 year old with 10 years of experience will have been fooled a few times and be much less willing to take a bad deal.

Also, there is a misconception that the 23 year old has comparable skills to the 33 year old.

If the 23 year old has been coding since he was 15, then he has 8 years "experience". We all know that is sort of bullshit. While some teenagers take coding seriously, it's a lot different than working on a real project with deadlines, customers, and "It has to work" attitude.

So, the hirer/funder convinces himself that the younger person has similar skills AND will be easier to guide or manipulate.

It's not just in tech that this happens, but it is more prevalent because tech is such a fasting changing and relatively young industry.

I mean, at one point, railroads were the latest thing and people starting railroad companies were young guys full of piss and vinegar.

I think as time goes on, you will see a gradual changing of attitudes, but it has surprised me how long this prejudice has stayed.

zxcvvcxz• 12 years ago

As a young person, this is ridiculous. Assuming I was a founder that could afford to hire people, I'd kill to have older and experienced engineers to learn from, and work for me. I don't care if they can only work 9-5 weekdays, that's probably more productive hours than the 80 hr/week young people I see with less experience playing table tennis and mixing social time with work time. Not that I'd reverse-discriminate or anything, but why not favor proven track records over young age as a starting point?

The story about Ionic seems a little ridiculous. And while I sympathize for Stamos, surely there must be more than age being the difference for raising funding. Even if it is a big factor - I can't imagine all VCs being idiots, seeing a better product in an obviously valuable market and then passing.

microcolonel• 12 years ago

Is this even really such a specific issue? Good businesspeople will not throw away enormous potential value, regardless of its origins, less competent businesspeople will make the less competent judgements of ageism, racism, sexism etc. at the cost of their business.

There are a lot of crappy businesspeople willing to toss the plasticity of young employees, and the experience of older employees away; these are the people we hopefully aren't giving venture funds until they figure things out.

mhewett• 12 years ago

Having been a "young developer" and now an "old developer" (mid-50s) here is how I see the pros and cons of older developers:

Pros of being older: 1. Wisdom from having written a million lines of code and having run into all the bugs before. 2. Can more capably see the pros and cons of the latest fads. 3. Not as distracted by the need to play. 4. Don't drink as much (the younger generation drinks a LOT! 5. Capable of providing adult leadership.

Cons: 1. Even those of us in excellent shape just don't have the energy we used to. 2. Family distractions lead to lack of free time to keep up with new developments. 3. Family distractions lead to more errors. 4. We are sure we've seen everything already. (And boy are we wrong!).

All in all, my next startup is definitely going to have a mixture of wise, seasoned hands and energetic young devs.

sivanmz• 12 years ago

The fastest way to age is by working 80 hour weeks, living off of pizza, beer and Red Bull, and burning out.

At what point will early obsolescence distort the supply of willing workers and compensation demands?

blisterpeanuts2• 12 years ago

There are a lot of comments here about competence of software developers at various ages and levels of experience.

However, the New Republic article was more about technology entrepreneurs who aren't necessarily coders or engineers in the traditional sense.

These entrepreneurs and the VCs who seek them out and fund them tend to have a bias toward youth, because there have been some stunning success stories among the young, as laid out in the article and in many comments here (Torvalds, Wozniak, etc.).

But, the skeptics interviewed in the article argue that these 20-something wunderkinden are the edge cases, not the mainstream. Historically, scientists and technologists have tended to accomplish more in their 30s and 40s and beyond.

In the world of software development, certainly there is a mixture of talent across the age spectrum. There are excellent programmers in their teens and twenties, and mediocre coders in their fifties. But there's a general consensus that experienced programmers in their fifties are better able to avoid some classes of mistakes that twenty-something coders simply haven't had a chance to see yet (but will).

sjg007• 12 years ago

It irks me when a journalist doesn't do their homework. Take for instance: "Unfortunately, the problems the average 22-year-old male programmer has experienced are all about being an affluent single guy in Northern California. That’s how we’ve ended up with so many games (Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Crappy Bird) and all those apps for what one start-up founder described to me as cooler ways to hang out with friends on a Saturday night."

To dissect this: 1. Rovio is a Finnish Company (Angry Birds) 2. Flappy Bird is a guy from Vietnam. 3. Crappy Bird... ?

Not one of these examples illustrate the argument that they were solved by 22 year old affluent males from Northern California.

kfcm• 12 years ago

The year 2000 saw me in my early going on mid-thirties, and I was the youngest person in the room.

Then I went to work for a pretty cloistered company for the next eight years. One closed local office and one declined offer to move to HQ later, I started looking around. And suddenly found myself the oldest person in the room.

I had done contract work for many of these companies prior to 2000, often for the very same departments or groups. The irony of the situation is the lead and management positions which had been filled by guys in their late 30s, 40s and 50s, were "now" filled by guys in their late-20s and very early 30s. And the difference showed.

This is in the Midwest, so ageism isn't just a SV thing.

The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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