Ask HN: What's the State of Ageism?
At what age should one start worrying about ageism and being hireable?
*Assuming a technical career path is chosen and there is progressive career and skill development.
*Assuming a technical career path is chosen and there is progressive career and skill development.
Congrats!
It's more that, for most business programming roles, experience stops being cumulative at some point. For example, for a Java developer, 5-7 years is probably about where experience tops out, and beyond that it doesn't really help if you have 15 years experience in Java, or you have experience in Perl before you did Java, etc.
Cumulative experience of 10, 20, 30 years is really only useful for highly specialized roles (writing compilers, database engines, operating systems), management, etc.
I would worry less about ageism, and more about working on a track where experience is valued.
If you have 20 years of experience, you need to be working for the kind of place where 20 years of experience has more value than 7 years of experience, or else you need to accept getting paid like you only have 7 years of experience. That's not ageism, that's just economics.
Another area where experience can have value: embedded systems.
I don't think I can say the same about people with only 5 YoE.
Even if the quality and value of our work _can_ grow proportionally.
I wish there were employers who understand that.
So yeah, my age is a problem, but it's not ageism.
I don't think that's true, unless you are counting the more-senior roles which tended to require programming experience (e.g., Systems Analyst in many schemes) as “other careers” rather than just a step up the information systems career ladder.
Also, This(1) has to be the first time I can remember BLS predicting negative growth in the programmer job market! I always remember it being listed with decent job growth...
0) https://codegym.cc/groups/posts/560-50-years-and-counting-ho...
1) https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
If you read the descriptions, “programmers” are pretty limited (“They turn the designs created by software developers and engineers into instructions that a computer can follow.”)
the stack overflow survey is a bit depressing though - we seem to lose everyone early... Seems like only 30% of people make it past 15 years. Which surprises me, as my circle of programming friends all have like 20+ years. Maybe thats why we keep re-inventing stuff :-/
Look into it, it’s real. The people saying otherwise are either lifers at their company or lying.
There is also the old cliché that there is a difference between 10 years of experience and one year of experience repeated 10 times. If you are a coder who has repeated the same couple years of experience 10-15 times, then you might be over-estimating your own value.
So as you get older, it takes some humility to truly look at yourself and determine your own value. This is why I moved away from coding and towards product management - I'm a decent coder and people appreciate having me on the team, but my value lies in the lessons learned over the years outside of coding. So I seek roles where I can use that experience, and not the decades of coding experience on mostly dead tech stacks.
Same company will fire someone after 3/4 years because they haven't moved up.
But in many areas your statement is true.
The amount of opportunities available to me just grow year after year, because I get to know more people (which also move to different companies), that would like to work with me in the future.
Just be a person that ships, makes things work, in a friendly mood and you are set for life.
People you work with also grow in their careers, which means that often enough, they make the calls on who gets hired and who doesn't.
I think that during your 50s, you should have built a good "base," though, like paying off your mortgage. You should have more leeway to actually take life in a less demanding way, so perhaps do some consulting or not work full-time and earn a living to retire in peace.
This is the biggest lie in tech. Doing this will keep you overworked because you’re reliable. You will never get promoted and when you try to get another job you will be so good everybody will be afraid of you.
Is this advice in contrast to how you ended up in that spot?
No networking, soft skills sure but not social skills, depends?
Asssuming these variables stay the same how does age affect hirability and at what age?
In any area, you'll suffer "ageism" while doing this because you won't have the same energy and potential as a fresh graduate.
The problem isn't your age(ageism), but the fact that you haven't managed to truly achieve seniority.
Sure, you could have gotten your senior title within 3 years from graduating, but you don't have the soft-skills that are needed to have a longer career. This applies to any area, it is expected in nowadays society that you don't behave like you live in your moms basement as you are older.
If you behave well and is generally nice, clear and have good work ethics, there's no way people won't like you and vouch for you in new positions. Sometimes they will get promoted and will want to have people around them that have worked with them before, and will want to invite you to their company.
Meanwhile a company might be ok with a 22 year old struggling to communicate with others or keep their supervisor up-to-date, they won't have that kind of patience for a 40 year old+ that has been working for decades.
And by the way, anyone can get those skills, just study and practice like you do with coding.
Thanks, I will. The likeability problem I have is because I am constantly in a position of having to disagree with others on technical grounds. Maybe I need to find a role where that's not the case.
As long as you’re actually competent I don’t think it would be too much of an issue. For someone who comes off as green with their skills, a company is more likely to take a gamble on someone young than someone older.
My experience has been that most devs in their 40s and 50s can run circles around those in their 20s and early 30s. If someone is already good in their 20s they're likely a savant. TL;DR the biggest thing is managing your career intelligently. I think there's more risk when you approach 50, but the same is true in every industry.