Why won't anyone hire middle-aged geeks? | Hacker News Reader

Why won't anyone hire middle-aged geeks?

itworld.com

43 pointsabennett73 comments

Because middle aged geeks have lives, a mortgage, etc., and have progressed to the point that they can command higher pay.

People hiring would much rather roll the dice on a PFY that doesn't have a clue but has a lot of enthusiasm, and will work for peanuts.

Fundamentally the problem is that salaries are low, because there are very very lax professional standards in IT work compared to other disciplines (engineering, law, medicine, etc.), mainly because training is task focused, not concept focused. (Thus why we end up with legislation driven requirements like SOX and HIPPA, which exists because too many incompetent people were trying to do jobs they were never properly trained for)

Personally i'm relying on those falling educational standards we keep hearing about.

I may be >40 but I can actually read and write, something which seems challenging for new graduates.

Just wait until "standard" English becomes text speak. When that happens the advantage evaporates. The plus side is that the vowels on our keyboards will get a rest.

That's all well and good until those recent graduates become the boss;)

That's what screencasts are for. ;)

I just graduated from a state college and all of my friends are great readers and writers.

I think you are seeing different issues.

> and will work for peanuts.

A very wise friend of mine uses to say "you pay peanuts, you buy monkeys"...

>>People hiring would much rather roll the dice on a PFY that doesn't have a clue but has a lot of enthusiasm, and will work for peanuts.

This is quite funny.

I just got outsourced. I went along with the move mostly to see something different. I heard yesterday that the boss laughed and said that he got me for "paying peanuts"! :-)

(The good part is that I won't have less money after taxes, rent, food etc. And I'll have better weather and life.)

And yes, I'm the wrong side of 40.

Edit: Made clearer, sigh.

I think it's fascinating when someone physically gets outsourced themselves instead of replaced by an outsourcer. Where did you go?

Cluj, Transylvania (Romania).

Please, no vampire jokes. :-)

I haven't had time to travel around and see the mountains and everything else, but it is really fun being here. Except all the smoking.

Food is good, people are nice. The standard coffee is espresso. Etc.

Interesting. Is it much cheaper? Was it your idea to outsource yourself or was it your boss's? Did you choose Transylvania yourself? ;) Would love to pick your brain if you want to flip me an email: dave at rapin dot com

I've only been there for a few weeks, but so far most things are at least as good as in Scandinavia -- for me, that is.

I was scared when I realized how low the median salaries are. (100-200 Euro is not unusual, as I understood it.) Hungry and/or desperate people are scary. I believe many of the locals have family in the countryside and get food directly in that way.

Is it cheaper?

For 600 Euro/month you get an apartment with 100+ square meters and glassed in balcony, etc. (I got something smaller.)

A good lunch is typically 3-4 Euro. Many good restaurants (not oriented for West Europeans) takes 10 Euro for a nice dinner. And so on.

Cluj is a university city of about 400,000 people with tech businesses. It is really good it isn't too large.

It will be fascinating to see everything about mountains -- and to learn about culture etc (this is the first time I've worked outside Scandinavia, this is an adventure to me!). Everything will probably change fast, since Romania joined the EU a few years back.

It was the company where I was a consultant which outsourced a large part of the work. I got a choice -- and it was quite easy to make the decision, since I'll probably not get the chance again.

It is fun to see interest. Maybe I should start a blog and write about stuff, in addition to Facebook (to get friends come visit).

Spolsky probably wouldn't agree with this assessment. They don't pay peanuts to new hires at FogCreek (or Microsoft, or anywhere worth working). Competitive salaries yield competitive employees.

I wonder what the statistics would look like if we normalized the data for these things. There are plenty of middle-aged geeks without mortgages, kids, etc and plenty of younger geeks with them.

I actually think it's also due to the immaturity of the field and the rate of change for the technologies / practices within it. We seem to be in the only field where a freshly minted PMP can get a job even if they have no real experience. Why else would we have so many people who have never written an LOC managing developers? Engineers generally don't.

Job security and employee loyalty is also at an all-time low so make sure you're billing enough to cover your retirement.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend about this the other day:

Friend: Dude, check out this guys code, I haven't met him yet, but like him already, identified the problem as NP complete

Friend: (code link)

Me: yeah that looks good

Friend: too bad, I don't like hiring people older than me

Me: too bad that's illegal

Friend: yeah

Friend: I definitely do and have, I just prefer younger people in general, they're less likely to be stuck in their ways or not take direction

Friend: Or think, I know better than this guy

Me: but he might know better than you

Me: well meet the guy first

Friend: he's coming in today

Friend: I am open to that, I like to hire people smarter than me, as long as they know that I make the decisions and sometimes I will not agree

I would guess your friend has worked his way up in a large bureaucracy. From his quote: "as long as they know that I make the decisions" he is more concerned with people knowing he is in charge than in reaching the best solution.

I wouldn't guess that. My company is four people, and it's my first full time job. When I hired a contractor for a few weeks, who I'd guess is in his mid 30's (I'm 24), he couldn't handle it when I made a decision he didn't agree with. Totally destroyed the relationship.

Maybe you could have communicated why you made the decision you did and not had the relationship go south. Or you could have said something like, "You obviously feel strongly about this, I don't have time to discuss it right now but lets make some time before or after work in the next couple of days."

People have different motivations; often they just want to be heard but some times they need to be "right." Sometimes you can make a meaningless concession so that they are "right" and have them full speed on your side again instead of fighting you.

I did that, several times, and I wasn't blunt or aggressive (which made one of us) - I'm not totally socially inept. I "lost" more of those arguments than I won. I genuinely think it would have been okay if I weren't fresh out of grad school - the guy in question was often condescending when trying to make a point.

Maybe he's an exception, I don't know, but I definitely think the age difference made things worse.

Please don't take offense to this, but if you're fresh out of grad school you probably don't know as much as you think you do. Not to say that automatically makes you wrong, but you should definitely be more prepared to justify your decisions, even to people who work under you.

No offense taken. I think I recognize my own limits (Stanford's a good place to learn them), but I also know our customer base better than a contractor, and at the end of the day I'm the one who has to maintain the code. There were certainly situations where I went with what the contractor said rather than what I preferred because he made reasonable points (e.g. "this would add a dependency to the project") or just general software engineering stuff where I deferred to his experience. I also think I was more than fair about discussing and justifying my decisions when I did have to make the one he didn't like, but it didn't seem to mollify him.

I just remembered another trick you can use when someone is arguing one tack; get them to commit to the ultimate deliverable. i.e. "So you say we should do XYZ using PDQ, so will you be able to demo it for the customer next Tuesday?" Now to be right they have to get it done on time, and if they waffle you can assert your decision.

I didn't get that feeling at all. Very few problems have a "best" solution. Generally they have a whole myriad of good solutions with various pros and cons, and as a boss you sometimes take a strategic decision say "we're going with solution X" and have people get to work rather than getting bogged down in a two week argument. I mean I don't always agree with every decision my boss makes but at the end of the day I respect the fact that he knows more about the big picture and our customers than I do and that he signs my paychecks.

I understand where your friend's coming from. I've had bad experiences hiring contractors older than me - any disagreement resulted in the attitude (whether made explicit or not) that I obviously don't know what I'm talking about because I'm 24.

This is why, aside from programming ability, I judge programmers not by their age but by the conversations we have over beers.

And yes, I do have a slight bias against programmers who don't drink (unless they're recovering alcoholics or can't produce alcohol dehydrogenase or something like that).

I don't drink - I'm not draconian about it, but I won't have a beer unless not doing so would be antisocial, and I don't enjoy it. I'd tell you it doesn't make a difference, but maybe I'm just too terrible programmer to realize how terrible I am...

That's just depressing. I came here to post that this was probably a non-existent problem – that the middle-aged IT workers not finding work just need to modernize their skills a bit and all would be fine. Your post opened my eyes, I guess.

That said, not everyone is like this. My company prefers experienced developers, so long as they're enthusiastic and have experience with relevant tech. We're a start-up, and find that the "old guys" are easily able to hang with the young guns in terms of energy and productivity.

For the record, this is only illegal in the US if the applicant is over 40.

There are also state laws to consider in the US.

There is a stigma attached to middle-aged job hunters. Why hasn't he found his dream job by now--is he fickle and hard to please? Why isn't he already rich? Why does he need to work for me, the youngish owner/manager, instead of me working for him? Why can't I find any significant contribution to computer science in his background? How many sick days is this old dude going to take? Why doesn't he add /her after every him? How old IS that cell phone he's wearing in a belt holster? Is he sitting there thinking in COBOL while writing PHP for me? Will he infect my codebase with some alien thoughts from 1975? Why hasn't he affected a clipped accent so he can talk more quickly and hiply? Why is his irony hidden whereas ours is not? That's a lot of stigma to wade through on the way to finding out he's probably pretty good.

"There is a stigma attached to middle-aged job hunters. Why hasn't he found his dream job by now--is he fickle and hard to please? Why isn't he already rich? "

It's funny you mention this. An unmarried (and has never been married) friend of mine who is in his 40s says he has the same problem with dating. Women wonder: why isn't he married? is he afraid of commitment?

Because we have the "benefit" of experience and thus, generally higher salaries.

Many companies treat coders/developers as 100% fungible; any of them can do anything any other can. It's just code, right? So get the cheap one instead of the expensive(r) one. It's the same mindset that thinks offshoring is a slam dunk, based solely on the cost.

Agreed. Traditional big business usually sees software development as a commodity (and in many ways it often is)

Hence, go for the cheapest supplier.

Bleak as it is, at least I think you can contrast this with the fact that any talented innovative developer probably doesn't want to work as a programming drone in a big company as they get older.

I'm sure that's definitely a factor, but I think there are a number of other variables in play (perceived or real). I think there's a tendency to think that in a younger developer you might find more passion, optimism (or at least lack of cynicism), open-minded approaches to problem solving, etc. than in an older one. I think also compared to a number of other industries, the premium put on experience isn't always valued very highly. I think it's increasingly easy to look at successes from little companies full of scrappy recent graduates and wonder why you need someone with 10+ years on your team... For the record I've got 11+ or so years of experience and am rapidly approaching 'middle aged' :|

An important point to note here is that especially when it comes to programming, a recent grad != zero experience.

Personally I'm not even a graduate yet (1.5 years to go -ish), but I can already cite 5 to 7 years of experience in the industry depending on how stringent you want to be and at least 12 years of general coding experience.

I would wager a lot of those "scrappy young companies chock full of enthusiastic fresh graduates" were in a similar position with people who actually had a lot of experience despite being fresh grads.

Oh, totally agree. Didn't mean to suggest that grads have no experience. Plenty of them have loads of great work under their belts by the time they leave school.

You are correct on all counts, and I certainly didn't mean that the reason I gave was the only one. I think, in retrospect, I should have worded it differently. When I said "experience", I certainly meant what everyone thought it meant, but I think I also just meant more time on the job. More time working leads to higher salaries on average, even without "experience" coming into play.

To spin it the other way: In software engineering the compensation tends to be much more based on skills and less on seniority than in other fields (mostly because the skill is easier to demonstrate and test than in other fields). Therefore, more senior people, who expect a boost to the compensation comparable to the one other professionals get due to their seniority, often find trouble finding a job that would satisfy their expectations.

Startups would be wise to consider 'middle-aged', 'experienced', or 'old man' developers when forming their team. Sure, they may cost more than a couple of college kids, but you are basically getting 4 employees in one:

1) A normal application developer who can code to whatever stack you are using.

2) A system level developer who can push aside whatever application stack you are using when that stack becomes problematic. She can do this because she has been building these applications before the stacks existed.

3) A process consultant.

4) A business consultant.

Numbers three and four are the keys here. I typically turn over 5-6 mid-sized projects a year. Even if the 'old-man' developer you are looking has only worked on large projects chances are they have completed at least half a dozen in their career. This right here is what you are paying for. The ability to pick their brains about what processes and practices were successfully internally and why. What clients were successful and weren't and why. What kind of long term problems you are going to run into based on your short term decisions.

Because we are social animals who automatically situate ourselves in hierarchies with those around us, and non-managers with grey in their hair create instant conflicts for many young adults' social-hierarchy construction reactions. We have an animal urge to defer to people who look like our parents, and another animal urge to be deferred to by our subordinates. Ironically, by the time our own hair has some grey in it most of us have gotten pretty good at understanding and resolving these conflicts, but for a 27 year old semi-alpha, the presence of an older person (especially man) in a nominally beta role can instantly raise their blood pressure.

So, based on what's being said on this thread, you better move out of programming/IT by the time you're 40, otherwise you're screwed (or on the way to be screwed)?

Quite the opposite. All you have to do is be better than the young whippersnappers.

What's being said in this thread is that many (most?) companies don't want to pay for that.

No, what's being said (imho) is that most companies don't want to pay an automatic experience premium unless you can prove you are worth the premium.

Be aware they say middle-aged (usually 40-60 years of age) when the stats actually say that unemployment rose in those 55+ and actually dropped in the 25-54 range. I don't think the facts completely align with the title. I know many folks who are 40+ who will think this was about them when it's about people 15 years older.

25-54 is a huge range. These days, 25-35 or 40 could very well mean no family obligations (and thus greater flexibility wrt pay, location, travel). 35-54 likely means family. The splits there would be interesting to see (not having looked at the article yet).

If they're claiming that 55 years old is middle aged, they must know a lot of 110 year olds.

This - the article title is frankly linkbait given that it doesn't connect to the core statistic they're citing. But I doubt entitling it "Why won't anyone hire 55+ geeks?" would get half as many clicks...

Also, at 55+, someone went to college 30+ years ago. There are lots of amazing, smart folks in that category but I doubt many of them majored in comp sci in the 70s. To make this statistic valid you'd have to normalize for their academic background vs. younger engineers, who are probably more likely to have a formal computer science degree.

Other than starting your own business so you don't have to worry about someone making biased hiring decisions, and staying on top of skills, how do you mitigate this?

I actually like coding and making things, so I don't necessarily see the executive suite somewhere I want to be when I'm 50.

Consulting and freelance, as well there is not as much bias in enterprise software development. As well one that many people do not think about is end of life technologies, COBOL, visual basic and other older technologies can be a bastion for those who want to do them. They pay well due to the lack of interest by the majority of technical personnel and owners of the technology are happy to just get someone who will support something that is not the latest and greatest.

Your opinions about the executive suite may change.. During my career I've increasingly found leadership a challenging and rewarding way to 'make things' in an entirely new way. Enabling teams of people to get things done is awesome. I get especially excited when I have the opportunity to help people who are frankly smarter and more talented than I am build things that I wouldn't have been able to build alone.

Old guys rant about things. And drone on about the old days. And often propose "old-fashioned" solutions. Which confuse and worry young hiring managers.

Yes, I'm an old guy.

Admit it, cultural considerations will have their effect. And no culture moves faster than IT.

Considering we are rediscovering things like RISC, Lisp and noSQL, I say it moves very fast, but in circles ;-)

Don't forget the cyclical centralisation / decentralisation of infrastructures. "Cloud" is the new old Mainframe.

And before "Mainframe" we called it "Time Sharing"

Actually, "cloud" is the new VAXCluster.

Ha! My Dad was a VAX programmer... it all comes full circle :)

Well played.

Pretty soon we're going to start hooking up those Arduinos to a monitor and having a USB Operating System (UOS), which will run 1 process in 1 memory space, and some company Minisoft will buy it and totally dominate some new market....

As an independent consultant for decades, I've found the opposite to be true. Clients don't care about my age since I'm just passing through. I've never taken a programming course, but a Mathematics education has really helped. It also helps that today's programmers are often semi-literate, so I look positively Shakespearan by comparison.

"Middle Aged" Geeks generally have other commitments.

Judging by my dad's experience in the IT industry. He's just too savvy. Younger employees are seen to be easier to manipulate and more like to fall for the tricks that big employers like to use.

Fundamentally. Young geeks are massively cheaper and eager to work for less.

Eh. Apologies for snarkiness, but I think reading IT World may be worse for your career than aging.

Entrepreneurs. There is a profit opportunity, soon.

If there is no demand for middle-aged geeks, their salaries are going to drop eventually. And, if their productivity is at least as good as young-aged geeks, it means that there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity.

The article does not deal with 'how' an employee gets hired. In my experience, HR is an almost airtight barrier against age while direct communication with the individual or team that you might work with is usually fair and quite open. You may fail, but mostly for good reasons; don't fit in with the team, horn locking with the current alpha etc. It is a humorous fact that I learned (at a late age) to refrain from commenting on the 'quality' of hard and software before learning what was favored in the direct interview process. (Never disparage Microsoft until you learn what products are in the dev chain--- or for that matter what database is being used! :) )

Its a common dilemma. Generally I find it relates to pay and skills rather than age. In that for a given skill there is a market rate. If you're an engineer and you've been in the industry for long enough you may find that annual adjustments moved your salary above the market price.

If you're middle age, and you've kept up with the latest technologies, and you're adding to your skills basket, generally it seems you're still employed. If you 'retired in grade' at some point and thought you would work until you could collect social security doing the same thing you've always done, well that hasn't worked out in practice.

...or minorities, or women

I doubt it's a major component, but at least in Canada, there's a program that subsidizes workers under 30 [1] with degrees for their first year. Cash flow is king, so you'd have a strong bias for a 29 year old over a 39 year old.

[1] http://www.youth.gc.ca/eng/common/yes.shtml

Damn, 55-years-old is middle-aged now?

the really good ones aren't looking for jobs, and the mediocre ones aren't worth the salary they seek.

good ones, we're hiring full stack web engineers in Blue Bell, PA: dgetz@wingspan.com

You are inconsiderate and dismissive.

I don't want to work for you.

'tude fail.

It's a shame that the tone of this post caused it to be downvoted, because you actually do raise a good point that is worth discussing. Maybe talented younger programmers are more likely to job hop and roam a bit, whereas talented older programmers start to value a bit more stability and tenure. Or maybe the older programmers have progressed to a point in their careers where they have golden handcuffs or some other benefit that keeps them pinned to their job?

The post declares, very bluntly, that if an older programmer is looking for a job, he/she must not be any good. Based on my own hires, I know this isn't the case. But maybe the mix is different from the young folks? Anyway, it's an interesting perspective that might be worth looking into.

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