The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age

The next year, it was "3rd grade" when teachers would start tearing up non-cursive papers, then 4th, 5th, 6th and "definitely in junior high". But it never happened in reality.

In my 20s, the Big Scary Thing In The Future was ageism in tech. Once you hit 30, you'd never find work again in this industry.

Then it was 35. Then 40.

I've given up listening. Every year, in addition to getting better at what I do, I find that more people want to pay me more money to come program computers for them.

Now it's certainly possible that the real number is 45, and you'll find me living in a cardboard box and begging for nickels at the off-ramp in a few years. But at this point I'm not overly worried about this particular myth.

> Brown and Linden’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census data for the semiconductor industry revealed that although salaries increased dramatically for engineers in their 30s, these increases slowed after the age of 40. After 50, the mean salary fell by 17% for those with bachelors degrees and by 14% for those with masters degrees and Ph.Ds. And salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even Ph.D degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection).

> It’s the same in the software industry. Prominent Silicon Valley investors often talk about youth being an advantage in entrepreneurship. If you look at their investment portfolios, all you see are engineers who are hardly old enough to shave. They rarely invest in people who are old.

The first paragraph, which contains the data that gives the veneer of respectability, is about the semiconductor industry. Even then, salaries don't actually decrease until people hit the beginning of retirement age (surprise!).

In the second paragraph, we switch to the software industry, where it's "the same" (no data to support that, natch). The supporting anecdote isn't even about employees, but investees... What proportion of people receiving money in the software industry do so via investment rather than a paycheck?

Of course the specter of ageism haunts everyone, so the linkbait is effective and we have 60+ comments here.

Now here's the key claim: "increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. "

Two points:

1. Would we expect a linear increase in salary with age? I would not. At some point the salary would likely 'top out' in any job.

2. The part about over 50s ignores a very important fact from the study: the over 50s work less (and therefore earn less). To quote the book: "Workers over the age of 50 are much more likely to work less than a full year [...]. One in six engineers aged 51 to 65 reported being paid for less than a full year of work in 2005 [...]". The book goes on to make a confusing claim about whether that's voluntary or not (jumping to the 2002 downturn and talking about interviews with engineers but with no data).

No they don't. The young, smart developers who already have strong backgrounds adopt new technologies, the old, smart developers do the same.

"The young can easily pull all-nighters."

Sure they can, and companies should be moving away from that as the code quality does drop off past hour 12 unless they're a super talented developer. In which case they're probably smart enough to know not to work an all nighter.

If you're not willing to pay $150k for a great developer that's going to get shit done, you're fucked already.

This article confirms what I suspected, older programmers don't retire, they just never get rehired after the latest round of layoffs.

The truth, as always, is nuanced. As the author says, it's up or out. If you're 50 and expect to do be doing the same type of work you did when you're 25, you're mistaken. As programmers we have to constantly be adapting.

The problem here is getting into any kind of attitude that says that you can coast. There is no coasting. Not in this business. If you're not constantly reading and trying out new things, your salary is headed down.

$60,000 (in the Valley?) + A whole month of training = I had to stop reading the article

(Source , National Public Radio ... http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134... )

What H-1B Employers Say

NPR repeatedly tried to interview the biggest H-1B users, but none agreed to talk.

No one is talking be we all know what's going down.

That said, I also believe the consumer web is in for some pain (the notorious A crunch). I get the impression a lot of unqualified 'super angels' felt it was more important that entrepreneurs become professional money raisers and media darlings, rather than help them focus on their core business.

When it comes down to it, if you're a seasoned entrepreneur with repeat successes – you'll be unstoppable for the rest of your life. The Biebers of startups are edge cases that simply get a lot of attention because it compliments media's goal for driving pageviews.

My anecdotal data lines up with the statistical data.

There is this perception that you can take a young person and train them fairly easily; that this is the thing to do. I think with someone older? it's not so much that hiring managers don't think they can be trained as that it's /weird/ on a cultural level, for a 25 year old kid to tutor some 50 year old. Really, I think that's a big part of the problem.

Now, I think the other side of that coin is that for most of us? we hit our 30s, those raises start slowing down, and we start looking for other giant gains.

I mean, through my teens and twenties, a year without a 20% raise was a disappointment. And if anything, the raises lagged increases in my actual effectiveness. In my late 20s, and early 30s? that slows down a lot. I'm looking around for that next productivity jump, and hey, turns out all those social skills I didn't have when I was younger? I am not saying I'm smooth or anything, but hey, I'm a hell of a lot better than I was. It looks to me like there is some low-hanging fruit (productivity wise) in management.

So that's the other side of the coin; Most of us? a decade or two into our careers, well, we start looking at management. That explains some of the fall-offs in Individual Contributor pay; Many of those who can, make a run for management, and many who are left behind are seen as "not making the cut" (which is kindof silly, considering the different skillsets required)

http://thecodist.com/article/yes_i_still_want_to_be_doing_th...

(my emphasis)

So how do you untangle the ageism issue from the skills issue? This article doesn't, but for the broader question you kinda have to.

How do you control for skills when finding out about ageism?

I'm pretty sure there's ageism in tech. This makes me a little scared. It's this exogenous thing that I can't control.

I'm pretty sure skills-decay is at least as common as ageism. Skills have market prices. They change.

This reminds me of a (PG?) essay that said essentially, if you're gonna call yourself a developer, don't call yourself an [X] developer, because you are not the language [X]. I suspect it's all the [X] developers out there who are seeing the most "ageism"

But they what do I know, I'm in my 20s.

[edit: typos]

Survivor Bias: the best and brightest get promoted. This reduces the average 'quality' of the remaining people in the original pool, even though none of the people changed in any way.

Lets say you have a team of engineers, and 5 of them just turned 40. One of those over the hill engineers just got promoted to be a VP, and another one leaves to be an independent consultant. Don't you think the two that left the team were probably among the best in those 5, and therefore were more highly paid than the other 3? The average salary of your 40 year old engineers just went down, even though the average salary of the original 5 likely went up by more than 300%.

If this is true, and the trend continues, then any ageism based on aptitude could reach a point of diminishing returns very soon.

I would also challenge the idea from the article that "the young understand new technologies better than the old do." Which I think is less true today than it was a few decades ago.

I believe this apparent ageism is a result of pattern matching and cost cutting moreso than a widely held belief that young engineers can outperform more experienced ones.

I'm a wet biologist by training and have been doing research and associated work for a decade. I have little opportunity to code at my current job. What I'm hoping to do is to formalize and hone my programming skills through some additional university courses.

Am I wasting my time? Am I forever going to be kicked to the bottom of the pile of applicants for junior positions because I've already had a career?

If you've been in a similar situation, I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588058

One of the comments there sums up the issue: "It's hardly a secret."

This seems to me a serious overstatement and more than a bit of "we're out of things to write about, let's make this one seem more shocking and hidden than it is" sensationalism.

More experienced developers bring additional soft

Sure startups may not hire older engineers to work at the front of the application stack, but as engineers age they tend to either start specializing in an area, moving deeper into the stack or move into leadership roles and the types of companies that have specific needs in those areas tend to be larger and more established.

One difference is that athletes tend to compete well physically only when young (depending on the sport obviously) whereas in tech you can still peck that keyboard when you're past your physical prime.

It's also why I will definitely try to transition to either entrepreneurship or contracting before I hit 40.

Yes, there are reports of major companies who hire Bachelor's and Master's degree engineers and by age 35 want them into management or out the door. So, maybe 1 in 100 stays around for a full career. So, at age 18 there is Joe and Sam. Joe goes to college and graduate school in engineering, joins the big company, and is out the door at age 35. Sam did some yard work in high school and just continues. Soon he has six trucks and 12 guys working for him. He has a house and a family, and his wife helps with scheduling, billing, and customer service. As long as the grass keeps growing, he's okay. He's expanding into lawn service for higher end clients, e.g., banks, medical office campuses, etc. He's planning to expand into landscape architecture with a plant nursery. So at age 35, Joe is out of work and Sam is doing much better.

Sam has a neighbor Pete who is an electrician. He doesn't bother to put his name in the Yellow Pages; he doesn't have a Web site; actually he does nothing on publicity. But he still gets plenty of calls, has a house, family, truck, and an apprentice. Roger got a Ph.D. in electronic engineering, worked for the big company, got fired at age 35, and wishes he could swap his Ph.D. for an electrician's license.

Kelly's father ran a small grocery store with two gas pumps out front. Now Kelly runs 10 gas stations with convenience stores, has a 50' yacht, a summer place on the water, a winter place in the mountains, and is paying full tuition for his children at private high schools and colleges. At his yacht club he notices a lot of small business guys like himself but nearly no technical employees or venture funded entrepreneurs.

More generally, a career should last 40+ years. Okay, look around: What big companies have ever provided such long lasting careers? How commonly? E.g., IBM? Okay, near 1994 they lost $16 billion and went from 407,000 employees down to 205,000. A LOT of careers got ended way before 40 years. So, at IBM, if joined in 1954 then had a chance of getting in 40 years. Much before 1954, IBM didn't look so good. So, really, for revered IBM, really had to join in the early 1950s -- that was about the only chance. Much the same for GM, GE, AT&T, etc.

Lesson 1: For a 40+ year career with one big company, mostly just f'get about it. Maybe can pull that off in K-12 teaching, college teaching if can get tenure, or working for state or the federal government.

Lesson 2: A huge fraction of the people with stable careers for 40+ years head their own small businesses.

Okay, for hackers and HN, we have:

Lesson 3: By age 35 or so, likely gotta be running your own business. Just grind that into your planning. For 'information technology', maybe it can be a great advantage. Still have to be running your own business.

Competition, how to handle competition? How do the people in the houses on the nice streets do it? Sure, they nearly all take great advantage of a geographical barrier to entry. Since nearly no one drives over 50 miles to see a dentist, be one of the best dentists in a radius of 50 miles and do well. Same for being an electrician, running a lawn service, remodeling kitchens and baths, auto repair, auto body repair, independent insurance agent, manufacturer's representative, etc.

So, hackers should plan to do an 'information technology' startup. If it does as well as a successful electrician, okay. As well as a guy with 10 gas stations and convenience stores, still better. As well as Google, terrific. Still, can't much hope to do well just working for a salary.

Alternatives? Sure, there can be many. Maybe will get founder's stock in a successful startup.

Still, look up and down the nice residential streets and see a lot of guys running their own businesses. So, do much the same except use information technology as an advantage.

For the article, it goes on and on about the 'reasons' a guy 50 can't get a job programming -- he asks for too much money, his skills are out of date, etc. The "too much money" is no reason to be unemployable; the fact is, he won't be hired at anything much above minimum wage. Skills? His 'skills' may be far superior, and for being 'up to date' with the latest version of some language, that's as easy or easier for an experienced guy than a young guy.

But there is another reason: The supervisor is supposed to be older, and the subordinate, younger. So, a guy 50 has to work for a guy 60 and can't work for a guy 40.

There's just no way out of it: In the US, big corporations as sources of careers are going away -- have heavily gone away. Maybe if the US would get back on its feet, e.g., quit being so happy about creating economic booms in distant countries, big companies could be stable enough to provide good, long term employment. Maybe. So, right, notice that one of the keys is to have a good geographical barrier to entry, that is, no competition from distant countries. So, basically the US is losing out on competing around the world so that what's left are lots of small businesses each of which serves customers in a radius of about 50 miles. Sad situation.

There is another observation: Supposedly the 1-2 wealthiest areas in the US are Silicon Valley and Greenwich, CT (with the hedge funds). Well, third is within about 60 miles of the Washington Monument. Because the Federal Civil Service pays so well? Yes, but only indirectly. The guys with the really nice houses in the best neighborhoods in that area mostly are not working for the Federal Government. Instead they are running small businesses where the customers are the Federal Government or are working for the Federal Government. E.g., a dentist can do well because the millions of people there working for the Federal Government aren't rich but are relatively well off and can afford to pay for a dentist. So, if want to run your own small business, then maybe pick one of those three areas. E.g., in Silicon Valley, to heck with venture capital and information technology and, instead, be an electrician who installs fantastic underwater lighting in swimming pools of successful information technology entrepreneurs. Or run a red sauce Italian restaurant, say, near Gaithersburg, MD.

One thing I fear is that there's a rise and fall to this. In other words, the fear is that younger generations are just not as interested in computers anymore... in other words, the past 20-30 years or so has been a "golden age" for computers that is slowly coming to an end. Data bears this out: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/03/21/computer_sci...

Let's look at popular music. Baby boomers grew up listening to records and the radio, and in their run they made some amazing music. It was an exciting time to be in a band, everyone was doing it, and some really great music was made. Back then, they said "if it's too loud, you're too old." Everybody talked about youth then.

What happened? People kept on believing that rock and roll was for the young, and there were more and more ways to access music and the technology for making music got better and better, but the reality was that the music itself just got worse and worse. The moment was over -- the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution and womens’ movement, the civil rights movement -- it was all in the past, and kids in the 80's, 90's etc. just had nothing to write songs about anymore, and (very much generalizing here) nobody practiced their instruments anymore because -- why? It was all about getting that record deal and getting famous. The more you unpack it, the more dismal it appears. Those great hits you remember from the 80's, 90's, etc? Look more deeply into it and you'll find in many, many cases there were baby boomers advising, producing, writing, performing -- basically still running the show. These days, popular music is a shell of its former self. Which isn't to say that there's isn't good music being made. But the quantity and the quality of the music just isn't what it was.

There have been plenty of other "golden ages" throughout history, in the arts, philosophy, literature, architecture, etc, etc. It's reasonable to assume that there will continue to be “golden ages” with regard to more modern pursuits, such as rock music and computer programming. Who knows how long programming’s first “golden age” will last? Maybe it’s just getting started, maybe it's coming to an end, or maybe it’s already ended. Regardless though, it's probably safe to say that someone who is currently in their 50's pre-dates programming’s first "golden age" and probably doesn't parse the world the same way as somebody who grew up in the thick of things. Which doesn’t actually mean that someone in their 50’s can’t be a good programmer, by the way, it’s a generalization, not an absolute.

These days, when I come on hacker news and I see another yet another article about a completely boring social-media who-cares php-based startup with kids at the helm, when I see how weak Facebook is as a technical platform (28 year old CEO) especially when compared with Google (40 year old CEO), when I see how much kids these days rely on bolting shit together and copying and pasting code without even knowing how that stuff works, it makes me fear for programming. Again, I’m generalizing, there are plenty of good programmers under 25, and plenty of good programmers over 40, please don’t take offense if you’re outside of that age range. My worry is not that good, young programmers don’t exist, my worry is that their numbers are decreasing.

When you're in school, deadlines are well-tested because everyone's doing approximately the same work. Unless you have a health crisis or death in the family, you don't have an excuse for a late assignment and the typical 10%/day policy is more than generous. When you're at work, though, 90% of "deadlines" are just someone's opinion and a good 50% are impossible. VC-istan is about exploiting young kids who haven't learned that yet and who would rather stay at work till 3:45 am than miss a "deadline" set by some VP with Shit's Easy Syndrome. See: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

The older programmers are really good at what they do, and they're a lot more flexible than the stereotype gives them credit for. The problem, however, is that they're a threat to the cult. Bring someone on board who does his best work between 8 and 11 (when the kids are just starting to roll in) and goes home at 5:30, ignores the deadlines that don't actually matter (i.e. the ones set by egotistical bosses, not hard deadlines that must be met if at all possible) and suddenly there's a breakdown of the Cluelessness. Couple this also with the Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse; the Clueless young people don't see that the older guy is 4x more efficient than they are (because they're inefficient and don't know it, cf. D-K). All they see is a guy putting in significantly fewer hours. Either the young Clueless will see him as a piker for his shorter work hours, or as a badass for his high effectiveness (making him a legitimacy threat, as the younger engineers see him as the real alpha).

I would also add that there's a culture of extremely harsh age-grading. VC-istan is most concentrated in high-COL areas where you can't raise a family on a (non-financial) programmer's salary; at two you can do it, but two career jobs, plus kids, necessitates maids and daycare and that's expensive and complicated, too. Because the only way to own a house in these cities is to become an executive or financier, you have a lot of 22-year-olds who see themselves being executives-who-code in 5 (!) years-- having managerial control of the division of labor and using it to give themselves the fun stuff, but being full-time programmers-- never mind the fact that that's extremely impractical in almost every organization. Very rarely do executives spend less than 20 hours per week in meetings. A 40-year-old who's been around the block and still programs might tell them as much. That's a problem. To counteract this, the 35-year-old VCs and 30-year-old founders discredit the 40-year-old programmers as "bitter" and he reacts by leaving, just after the one-year cliff so as to take a couple lottery tickets out the door with him because, well, strange things happen.

The short way to say this is that older programmers aren't the problem. The issue is that most of these formulaic startups are founded on exploiting young talent that overestimates the career value of low-end engineering work (because these people don't have the experience to tell what quality work is) and most older people can see through the bullshit. That's dangerous, insofar as it represents the threat of the younger Clueless engineers also learning to see.