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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> Ageism is a thing.

Indeed. I’ve been in the too while executives at a large, publicly-traded company denied specific hiring requests because their LinkedIn profile pictures “looked too old”.

On the other hand, that company was terrible to work for many reasons. They weren’t excluding older developers because they thought they were less knowledgeable. They were excluding older workers because the company knew they couldn’t trick them into working 12-hour days and putting up with abusive management practices. Young people could be convinced the bad things were normal. Older devs knew better and wouldn’t stick around anyway.

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I think this hits the nail on the head. Ageism often goes hand-in-hand with other negatives and is a warning sign about a workplace. Perhaps, ageism does us older devs a favour because we'll get screened out quicker and not have the misfortune to interview at horrible companies ; That said, sometimes older devs don't help themselves. At a place I previously worked at, colleagues my age or older would make sexist/racist/disabled-mocking jokes, utterly inappropriate in the office but they'd got away with for years. The younger folks generally knew not to do this, and were offended, but then often 20-somethings while careful not to be racist or homophobic would simultaneously be blatantly ageist against their older colleagues. I got treated badly by some younger colleagues there actually, suffice to say it was symptomatic of issues in that company and I found a better job.

What did you intend by "in the too"?

"in the room" ?

Perhaps "in there too" ?

maybe "in the loo"?

Your version wins :-) Thanks for the chuckle!

I've hired a few 50+ devs and every time I regret it. Those specific devs learn much slower. They had a complex about their age that made them difficult to work with and connect with. Their work product was bad and no amount of intervention corrected course.

Being only in a senior role that late in life itself is a red flag.

This is incredibly wrong and I hope you get an opportunity to meet people to change your mind.

I had an older employee in his 60s work as a dev even as he was slowly dying of cancer and receiving treatment. He showed up every day, doing his work, proudly contributing code even at deaths door, until his last day. He had worked 30 years in IT and was a senior dev and there was nothing wrong with his productivity, attitude, etc.

I was blessed to know him. I hope you find strength to open your mind and realize there are wonderful people of all sorts and ages all around you.

Your anecdata of one doesn't sway my real world experience. Cognitive decline starts at 25 for everyone, and no amount of midwit theory that everyone is equal will change that.

In this thread alone you said “hired a few” older devs, and yet discount one person’s experience as “anecdata” while you claim to have “real world experience.” The difference between the two is not “a few” - 1.

I’ve worked with amazing devs and hardware engineers from every age, including 50 and up. I’m guessing your experience with older devs “having a complex” was part of their response once they realized that you are just an asshole. As competent and experienced professionals who have dealt with many assholes before you, they adjusted their dedication to your project to reflect how little they cared about it once you became part of their job. They did enough not to feel guilty, but not so much that they risked working with you for longer than it took to find a better job.

I like how the story of the "amazing dev" above only tells about how he accomplished checking into work everyday and battling cancer. Every senior dev under 35 that I've hired has a much better narrative surrounding how well they work.

I also like your story about me, because there isn't a single person who works for me or with me that would describe me as an asshole. I'm just an asshole to morons in denial on this flaming turd of a "tech forum". If you don't plan for your expiration date in the programming trenches, then you won't see it coming when it hits you hard.

There's a reason the average age of a programmer is 39 just like there a reason why the average age of a construction worker is 38.

The median age of the entire US labor force is 42.5, construction is 42.9, and "Computer systems design and related services" is 40.6 according to the BLS.[1] In other words, on the scale of human life expectancy, the difference is probably negligible. Even if you were being serious and earnest, you're basing your hypothesis on data that is either incorrect or outdated. (If you actually meant to include mean instead of median, your source isn't a robust data analysis by definition.)

> I also like your story about me, because there isn't a single person who works for me or with me that would describe me as an asshole

If that's true, it's because you play a different character in person. Tell them about how you are "an asshole to morons" on a "flaming turd" of a tech forum, and how amused you were at the example of a terminally ill cancer patient continuing to work as evidence that old people can develop software.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18b.htm

My data is incorrect, despite the closest you could find to a meaningful dataset is "Computer systems design and related services". Lol.

That's the industry classification with the largest number of "Software Developers, Applications" occupations from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics[1]. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a comprehensive analysis of occupations by age based on BLS data. I'm guessing your source is a survey that probably has a margin of error larger than the difference between any median ages provided by the BLS for industries that employ the most developers.

Taking the industry as a whole is representative of a typical career path. If your narrow point is that people who have entry level positions are young, well, of course.

If you've got a better dataset than the BLS, I'm sure there are many people who'd be interested, and you should share it.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2018/may/oes151132.htm

I've got full access to Payscale's data sets ;)

> there isn't a single person who works for me or with me that would describe me as an asshole.

...to your face. But you have no idea what they privately think, or say to each other when you're not there.

(I'm with GP, I too guess what they think isn't what you think they think.)

You probably hired a bunch of crappy young devs as well but if you are biased against older folks you will notice it more.

So I should measure geriatric developers against junior developers just to be fair?

Maybe measure - and hear me out on this one - all team members equally, factoring in their total comp. How much more productive is the team for having the individual on the team, regardless of their demographics.

Maybe - hear me out out on this one - I did and that's why they were fired.

Why measure anyone? Measuring is for the insecure. Just trust your gut, obviously you know best...

I wish I could watch the end of your career pan out for laughs. Convinced that you're still as competent as you were when you were younger, but those assholes in charge of hiring won't give you a chance.

Lol ok buddy...

I've had the opposite experience. Most experienced develops tend to learn things much quicker because they've got a lot more experience learning new things. I'll willing to bet the third or fourth programming language you learned came a hell of a lot quicker than the first.

Problem is management is a pyramid (there is no place for everyone, even the best of them) and in some cultures (I´m in South America) a wealthy and contacted people club.

Even if you are really good, you will not get promoted if you came for a non-wealthy background.

What's above senior? Senior++?

Staff, principle, fellow?

More seriously I think something that can happen with older folks is they might fall into working in a single place with a single set of tools for a very long time so when they transition to something different it may be hard to adjust. Not necessarily because “they are old” but because if they did one thing and only that thing for 15 years it’s hard to change.

They could have had those roles already. Once you're in those advanced IC type of roles, there aren't really a lot of places that you can go. A lot of the time that role depends on your domain experience within the company -- Usually to "move up", you have to go down a role to a bigger/more-challenging company.

Thus at BigCo, hiring senior devs of advanced age should make sense to do.

s/a staff engineer/architect.

This is entirely dependent on the company. Netflix has one level "Senior Software Developer". My former employer only went up to Principal Developer. My current gig has one Senior Staff Engineer, me. The thing is, I didn't get better in the month between leaving my last gig, and starting this one. So these titles are a bit ambiguous.

Many companies don't have positions titled staff, principle, etc. A lot just stop at senior, or use numbers, etc. My current shop has SE1,2,3,4,5,6. 4 is what most tech companies would call a staff engineer, 5 a principle, and I'm not sure if we actually have any 6s at the moment.

Numbers are equivalent to titles. You presumably don’t have senior as title either.

Often some variations on https://staffeng.com/guides/overview-overview

Master of the Universe, of course.

Principal software engineer. Or software architect.

Many companies do not add fancy titles

sometimes it's just junior, regular and senior programmer

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