It could be worse. I could be an Old Coder in his 70s :P
But, in all seriousness, though age discrimination is very real, I don't feel that it's as significant a factor for me presently as my lack of a social network or the fact that I'm a generalist.
Honestly, while I don’t see much discrimination for older devs in general. If your experience doesn’t match what you “should” have for your age, it might be different.
I really wonder about how prevalent age discrimination is and more importantly - is it sometimes actually deserved?
We recently hired a super sharp guy in his late 40's. Guy is brilliant. His age is completely irrelevant.
I also worked with a guy in his late 40's and early 50's who thought that the pinnacle of innovation and best development practices is to write all your business logic in Oracle PLSQL. Also, he'd never heard of HTTP even though he used a browser every day.
I mean I'm sorry but...it's not that the guy was old, but his ideas definitely were. We're an industry that is always moving. If you're not learning new things, you're stagnating. And if you're stagnant, you're screwed, eventually.
But you can be stagnant at 25 just as easily. I know people my age (I'm 35) who never moved past Visual Basic and think a REST-ful API is an API that likes to take naps maybe.
I guess my point is - age discrimination probably does exist, but I'm willing to bet it's because the ideas the person being discriminated against are old. I really haven't experienced any kind of bad attitude towards women, or "minorities", or older people. If you can get your shit done, you're golden.
Age discrimination worried me a lot when I was in my 20s, and I really don't get the feeling that most young people have some delusion that they'll never get old. Whatever is going on, I really don't think it's based on a general prejudice from 20 somethings toward anyone over 40. I don't have a cite, so this is just a hunch, but my guess is that age discrimination is more driven by execs who are the same age as the more experienced programmers, not from the younger programmers.
Strange, I am closer to 50 than I am from 40, and despite all the fear I had in the past I never find myself discriminated because of age.
Also, I am not managerial material, So, after a small stint on management a few years ago I decided it was not what I wanted and so I am still basically a developer.
Maybe there's some invisible prejudice around that I haven't noticed, maybe I am lucky, but compared to other professions, I think that software development has been very fair for older guys like me.
Not just for software engineers. Age discrimination is real. It exists for young people, but it also exists for the group at hand here: old people.
It is real in general and in the end of last century it has become severe because of our quickly shifting society (the "computer" and "networking" revolutions, among others)
I work at a high (senior) level as a (Javascript) developer and I'm 48. I'm not aware of being discriminated against - I never have trouble finding work (and I'm a contractor so I change jobs frequently). Perhaps that is part of it: it doesn't cross my mind that I might be discriminated against; it doesn't cross my mind to treat anyone younger than me different from anyone else. So my attitude to people is open: I am not defensive or resentful. I'm in the UK which has, as far as I can tell, less of an ageism problem than the US.
If I'm honest I'm probably a little bit slower mentally with very challenging, complex problems than I was 15 years ago. But, I work with some of the highest paid people in the industry and I have never once thought to myself that I was out of my depth or slow technically compared to my colleagues - regardless of their age.
And there are real, big advantages to age / experience:
- Technically I have great breadth of experience: I'm (mainly) a front end developer but I've worked commercially in Node, C++, Java and PHP; I'm confident with server + database administration and dev-ops, complex application architecture and scaling. I'm the one that the senior managers turn to when they have problems / doubts / questions because I solve problems / answer questions for them - regardless of the tech stack.
- I'm more mature emotionally and have far better interpersonal skills and experience, meaning I am far more effective and pleasant to be with in a team. This is a huge (way more important than technical skills) thing - particularly in today's work climate where it is not acceptable to be 'toxic'. I am experienced about getting my ideas across and giving feedback without being an asshole; I am unfazed if people are stressing out / blaming / ignoring / not listening to me. I am not egotistical, insecure or emotional and I have enough experience with office politics to know what is happening and what people are about.
Age discrimination is hardcore in tech! Especially programming. I get it, when I was 23 and people told me they were 40 I was like, "damn that's my mom's age. This guy is old." I was really stupid.
That's an interesting angle to look at this from. It may be less about age as a number, and more about how the generations are perceiving each other. I'm 36 and haven't even felt the beginning creep of age discrimination. I'll probably always be perceived as someone who was a teenager teaching himself how to code during the years when software was just beginning to catch fire. Our generation will likely continue to hire each other well into old age.
All that said (and a lot is certainly true (except you're leaving out the unskilled and/or unlearning types of programmers :-) ), it's widely perceived that there is serious, unreasoning (aside from cheaper salaries, which is often a false economy) age discrimination in our field and that it's particularly strong in Silicon Valley. Doesn't matter if you're skilled and learning.
One interesting bit about American age discrimination law is that it only works one way. It protects those older than 40, but you can legally discriminate against young people.
If ageism in tech is real, then older programmers are being systemically undervalued by the market (probably in a huge way since I’d expect older good programmers to be be better than younger good programmers).
If I was doing a start up I might advertise roles that are for 40+ year old candidates only and see who I could attract.
Same here - over 50, remote worker - no complaints...
I hear about age discrimination on here a lot, but I can't honestly say I know any coder impacted by it. Even my friends in silicon valley are still employed in their 50s.
I wonder if its a regional thing? Areas with high demand for coders can't afford to throw out good candidates because they have grey hair?
Age based discrimination is a thing, but it is nearly orthogonal to the context in which corporations think about diversity. This orthogonal its is a product of senior folks supposedly expecting more pay, and lack of oversight using age as a metric of diversity.
At the tech giant I work at, older technical folks seem to either climb the corporate ladder a few rungs or get ground into contracting peons. It's not pretty...
I find that a lot of 'new' ideas in computing are just the latest iteration. So there's certainly value in having folks around who have seen many iterations.
So far the only kind of "age-related" "discrimination" (note the quotation marks) that I faced that I know of have been the "you're too expensive for us, we'll hire a junior engineer and train him" type deal.
I do prefer/tend to work for small companies and startups so even though I have a reasonably decent "enterprise development" and "CS" type backgrounds I'm more or less up to speed on (or at least aware of) the latest developments in the industry so if a potential employer wants to see me hack some homework CRUD assignment using whatever hot-shot stack they are looking to use it won't take me long to set it up.
> I do have a lurking fear there is some truth to that, and that I'll never fit in at this stage in my life.
Eh, I'm in my early 40s FWIW and I don't worry about these things. I meet people of all ages and walks of life who are working in software. However, if you are wanting to work for some flashy start-up or some hipster design shop, then I suppose I can see how that might skew your outlook...but that's not exclusive to only the software world.
Also, keep in mind that the 20, 30 year olds of today will become 40, 50+ year olds soon (time flies!). Since you are 28 now, by the time you reach your 40s, there will be even more middle-age engineers and greybeards running around.
> if I am going to be discriminated against just because of my age then I don't think it is worth it.
...another thing to keep in mind is that age discrimination is illegal, even in the US.
Not sure that age discrimination is rampant but I do believe (and witnessed in interviews) that lot of people don't keep up with technology and then later use age discrimination as excuse.
Experience in relevant technologies trumps almost everything else.
Disclaimer: I am in my late 40s
Allow me to provide a contrarian view. I'm not disagreeing that age-discrimination does not exist, however I must say it's not always the case.
I'm 35, so I wouldn't qualify as young but neither old.
Businesses tend to recruit younger devs for few reasons:
- They can be easily convinced to work longer hours
- They are typically paid much less
However there is one trait in older devs that make them undesirable:
- They tend to carry baggage from the past. This comes in various flavors, such as biases one has regarding the path of their careers, their interpersonal relationships (social and official), technology choices etc.
The thing about biases are that the mind that nurtures them can easily justify them, thus making the very biases appear rational and logical.
Furthermore not all biases are negative.
They are a useful piece of memory that comes with experience. The question is: Can you consciously choose when to apply the bias -or- Is your mind driven compulsively to apply them indiscriminately?
I would argue that victimhood about agism does not help anybody. If you are in a craft, where the barrier to entry is low, be prepared to compete with the fresh crop of talent coming in.
There's a lot more I could write about this. But I leave it for another time.
Late 40's and above... the reality isn't pretty in tech. I'm pretty sure I've missed out on two positions because age. On the one hand, we need to protected classes to prevent discrimination. On the other hand, bad faith discrimination claims have made older hires high risk. On balance... I am wondering if these laws are doing more harm than good.
But, in all seriousness, though age discrimination is very real, I don't feel that it's as significant a factor for me presently as my lack of a social network or the fact that I'm a generalist.
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