Ask HN: Outside of SV, is age discrimination in IT common?

10 points·04rob··5 comments

It seems to be pretty well established that there is a preference for younger candidates in IT/software development jobs in Silicon Valley. Is this true in other areas? Should I be looking for a new career as an individual contributor past 40/50?

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At my day job we value older programmers as we because it takes a long time to build the skills and experience needed to be effective.

From my experience, Experience is not all that valued in Software development field. They don't want brand new grads either. They seemed to want some one with 3-5 years of experience or so.

Here in Florida, there seems to be less ageism than in SV. Maybe it's because our industry is more oriented towards medical, defense, and aerospace. There is still pressure to use the latest languages and frameworks, but it seems less intense than on the west coast (I think this is one of the drivers of the ageism). Also, when you write software that has life or death consequences, it's nice to have a few people with 15+ years of experience on your team.

Or it might just be that everyone else here is old too. :)

Every competent older developer that I know, below retirement age, is either employed or contracting.

am in my early 40's and didn't experience ageism so far. yeah, it's pretty much a silicon valley thing

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