Ask HN: What happens to old developers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What happens to old developers?

23 pointsdarrennix20 comments

It seems like the overwhelming majority of engineers in the valley are guys in the 22-30 band. What happens at 30?

I'm three months away from the big 3-0 and I'd like to know what's going to happen.

Will I stop being employable?

Will I be expected to put on a tie and stop writing code?

I'm tempted to think that tech phenomenon is just so new that the median age of engineers hasn't had time to move up but that doesn't foot... all the guys who were 25 in 1996 are now in their 40s. Are they still writing code?

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I was shocked by this question. I'm 56 and I've worked at a variety of SF Bay Area companies since 1984 as a software engineer. It's been my experience that if you love coding and you keep learning new languages and technologies, then you can keep on coding. The other software engineers I work with are in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

Over the years, I've participated in probably more than a hundred discussions about job candidates I've helped interview for software engineering positions at places I've worked. I have never seen age discrimination. It is true that someone who has, say, been a manager for the past 10 years and now wants to "return" to programming may be regarded as a dubious candidate - but the same doubt would also apply to a candidate who is 26 and has not done much programming since the age of 16. It is also true that if you have learned nothing but FORTRAN or COBOL, we aren't going to be interested in hiring you for our Ruby-on-Rails / JavaScript / C++ project. But it's not hard to tell who is a real software developer, no matter what their age - it's someone who just _has_ to write code, like a writer has to write or an artist has to make art.

One thing I've always prized about technical work and hacker culture in general, is that outer appearances matter much less than in other fields. We don't need to judge what someone looks like, what clothes they wear, where they come from, how old they are; we just need to see what they do and how they act. If you are working someplace where that's not the case, I encourage you to look elsewhere. Otherwise, keep learning and continue to enjoy coding.

Some move to management, some move to architecture but there are plenty of "old" software developers.

Look up "neckbeard"... or here http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=neckbeard Items 2 and 6.

I think as you get older, you seem to go lower on the stack and find yourself building software that others use to build software, or get tied up in the abstract with your own ideas for a language, algorithms, etc.

... but I'm only 32, so I'm not sure.

I'm about to turn 30 in a month. I find myself coding less and spending more time reviewing code and systems designs. I work with other, younger devs (hopefully) teaching how to structure applications and organize them for easier deployment. I'm still always on the lookout new ideas, tools, language patterns, etc. That part of the job never stops. I also get to think about higher level systems architecture, scalability/availability. Fun stuff :) If you wanna stay elbow deep in code and not manage people or go to meetings all day then work with a small startup where every developer has to pitch in.

I think it's something like the plot of the Logan's Run movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(1976_film)

I was pulling for Soylent Green myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

I'm turning 32 soon, and I feel like I'm where 22 year olds are today. I'm motivated, willing to take risk, untied. It was a strange ride to get here though.

it was my 44th birthday yesterday. i write software. i've written/edited/deleted various answers to this question - i'm not sure what i can add that's relevant on a personal level. seems like you are really looking for some kind of statistical answer. but if there's anything you're curious about, feel free to ask here or by email.

I'm 56 and I've had trouble finding a job. Part of it is because of my age - employers aren't allowed to say that so they say there are "too many jobs" on my résumé - and part of it is that I haven't kept up to date. I stuck with C, refusing to learn C++ which I find revolting and C# which comes from a revolting company.

You may find it difficult to believe but I personally know and worked with a guy, who has decided to start work in IT when he was 32. With absolutely no prior experience in IT, after few years he became quite decent developer. He is nearly 40 now and he is still coding.

My personal experience is that it becomes tougher to find a full time programming position after about 40. Like hga, I look younger than my age but that is starting to fail as I get older. I haven't resorted to scrubbing my resume yet but I've considered it.

I mostly do contracting now. It avoids many of the issues of trying to get hired after 40. For short term gigs, fewer managers care about your age. I prefer contracting so that works out well for me.

I will have to come up with a strategy for dealing with age discrimination since I've tried other jobs and hated them. I'm a programmer and it is pretty much all I want to do. My short stint as a manager was pretty much a failure and I really didn't find anything I liked about it.

There's often more money and less stress to be found doing something else. You figure this out as you get older. You wise up and start wanting to have a life and not spend every waking hour typing code. Thus you move up the management chain and find a new crop of the young and stupid to accept the wages and working conditions. Just wait, it'll dawn on you eventually...

I am 35, developer (actively coding) and feel like i am still in my twenties. And I only now (like a year ago) started to consider to start a business. Is there something wrong with me? But it's true, sometimes I wish i was 22 again.

There are plenty of mid-late 30s Software Engineers at the Big G.

But how many mid 40s through, say, somewhere in the '50s (which I'll pick as an end point due to the availability of PCs in the '70s and programming jobs in the '80s)?

30 is a common age to start a family these days, you don't stop programming but your priorities certainly change.

At my last company, we had a great guy in his 50s writing code for us. I wouldn't worry about it.

Will I stop being employable?

As a conventional, salaried programming employee? Yes. (In what other field does 5 of so years of experience allow you a title with "Senior" in it?)

My experience is illuminating in that I'm blessed with genes that allow me to look much younger than I am. I'm now 50 and in casual encounters (e.g. in stores or restaurants) I'm still routinely mistaken for an 20s something possible student (of course I dress the part).

In the '90s, as I made the journey from 30 to 40 I noticed it became harder and harder to get results from sending out resumes ... until I got a clue and scrubbed my resume of the hard evidence of how old I was (education dates; by the time this happened I'd already scrubbed it of jobs prior to 1990).

The difference was like night and day, and if I watched my words I was able to keep up the subterfuge until I was hired and had to prove to HR I could be legally employed, something that didn't necessarily make its way to my managers. There was one interview a bit less than a decade ago where I slipped and mentioned working on PDP-11s ... the response was "Just how old are you?!??!!" (yes, that's illegal, but it was an instant honest response). They did hire me but it didn't work out; they were desperate but it's just as likely it was due to total cluelessness of the real customer, a state agency.

So my advice is one or more of the following:

Hide your age if you can and for however long you can. They can't legally ask.

Transition as quick as you can to a field that doesn't care so much about age. Embedded tends to be one (although not the Detroit car companies).

Get out of the conventional salaried programming career ("Nobody ever got rich typing"). As noted by others, you can move to management (which is genuinely challenging). You can be a consultant, although that tends to be a hard life. Or otherwise become your own boss, i.e. be a founder of startups.

Note that my experience is on the East Coast; I've heard that age discrimination in the Bay area is much worse.

How do you reconcile this with the common claim that programmers are painfully difficult to recruit? If they can't find people who can pass the FizzBuzz test, why would they narrow the applicant pool even further?

Prejudice (for that is what this seems to be, although I don't know not having it) doesn't have to be rational.

Some of this is almost certainly due to low quality (middle) management; people who are unable to mentor or supervise someone coming up to speed in their company's technical ecosystem are infamous for playing buzzword bingo with resumes and not indefinitely not filling positions. It's a small leap from that to e.g. not being willing to manage someone significantly older than you.

Then there are entirely rational aspects: older programmers tend to cost more per unit of time. In the US past 39 in the US they can sue for age discrimination if fired (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientis... for the current best known example). Safest not to hire them in the first place, that's legally much easier to defend.

I've been hired entirely on the basis of FizzBuzz type tests when the hiring manager took an instant dislike to me. He tried to find a reason not to hire me (as reported by one of my references, who knew both of us, me very well) but went ahead and did it because it was the only way to save his company (I was the only one who passed the tests). He was just out of college with no management experience and I was 37 (I think age was a small but otherwise minor factor in all this).

So rationality can overcome a lot. But how many times have we seen managers make "irrational" project or company killing hiring and firing decisions? How many investors have preferred to have all of nothing instead of some of something?

I would say that you shouldn't believe everything you read. The part that the people making those claims leave out is that they want someone who they can pay $30/hour.

There are many truly senior developers who can pass the FizzBuzz test who are never given the chance because of age. It isn't universal but age discrimination is real. And while it might be illegal, age discrimination isn't irrational. Older developers are generally more expensive. They generally can't or won't do 90 hour work weeks. And even people in very good health will generally have more issues the older they get.

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