a) When supply of well trained programmers is increased, it happens with 22 year olds, who are graduating from college. There is a 30+ year lag on those folks becoming old programmers. To hire a 50 year old programmer, he would either have had to graduate back in 1985 when there were a lot fewer people studying programming, or else changed careers at some point. And a lot of people don't change careers. There simply aren't as many older programmers available because it's a new field as these things go.

b) I've wasted enough years on dead-end tech that I'm more cautious about what I spend my time on now. Things I have become an expert in that are now useless to me and probably not valued by an employer:

TCL, Oracle 8i and PL/SQL, Ada, Java 1.1/1.2, EJB, Java AWT & Swing, Struts, Delphi, Flex, Paradox, Access + VBScript, ASP.NET 1.0, ODBC/OLE/ADO.NET, Linq to SQL, Subversion/MKS Source Integrity/Rational Clearcase/Perforce, differences between bash/ksh/csh scripting, awk+sed, perl, prototype.

And those are just the dead-ends that I regret exploring, because I think I will never use them again and because I could have spent that time learning something more useful. I know the time wasn't completely wasted, but time spent on prototype would have been better spent on jquery, time spent on linq to sql would have been better spent on nhibernate, etc. Reflecting on that leads to a bit of analysis paralysis when looking at TodoMVC to pick which next framework to invest time and effort in - will this be another flash in the pan, is this nothing but Fire and Motion (1)? I expect many employers would probably benefit more from a team of people who lack that perspective, because they'll be giving up more of their evenings and weekends on things that might pan out. I still do that, but a bit less these days, and I wait a bit longer before I dive in. Some might value my caution, but they probably aren't starting a bootstrapped or VC backed change-the-world-through-web-programming moonshot business.

(1) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

Bear in mind that programming is still a relatively new field. There are simply more young programmers out there. We see ageism more because it's an option. You can start a startup consisting only of young people.

I predict that as the field matures, it will become less of an issue. Companies won't be able to ignore older programmers (or at least will be less able to ignore them) because there will be more of them.

Consider this, many thousands of lives depend on my ability to write good, maintainable code everyday. I do Alarms, Telematics and 911 Systems.

So ageism. ya, it exists. But for every 50 year old coder, theirs 150 under 30 in the business. Its just the way it is. But I know, if I was in the hiring end of the game, I'd drop my dime on the old fart whose got a ton of REAL WORLD experience over some freshly minted grad every day of the week.

The ageism in programming is only a side-effect of it being a new industry really since the 80s for desktop and 90s for web. You don't find many people in any industry much older than the industry itself.

1. The size of the field has increased exponentially over time. Far fewer programmers started their careers in the 80s or 90s vs the past 10 years.

2. Many older programmers have transitioned into upper management or other roles - for example, product/project/people management, sales engineering, customer success, technical writing and so on.

3. People leave the industry due to family or health reasons, windfalls/inheritances leading to early retirement, burnout, or career changes. The longer someone has been working, the likelier it is that people from their cohort have left for one of these reasons.

Trust me, it doesn't happen.

What happens, instead, is that people get bored, or stop coding and lose the skills they don't practice, or get offered better paid jobs in management, etc.

Years back, maybe programming didn't have much to offer in terms of personal growth, I don't know. It's certainly not the case today -- I see people growing into better and better programmers, more rewarded, but also more interested, as time goes by.

Most companies you actually want to work for don't care about your age. If they do, is because they are just going to use you (like, code for 80 hours because you don't have a family and don't know any better...)

Now -- the real problem is that most people in programming really have no aptitude, skill or passion for it, and should at some point get out... but that's just me being an old fart ;-)

> ageism is a problem

Is it? With 18+ years of experience you would have a great chance of starting your own business. And customers just don't care whether you're 50 years old, or woman, or disabled, or anything - they care just about a product or a work you do.

Given the graduation rate of programmers, as with most things, the number of them over 50 is a growing segment of the total available programmer group.

There is ageism in some places, Google had that taught to them the hard way, but realize that a 50 year old programmer probably graduated from a university prior to 1985, there weren't as many graduating then as there are now. I know from experience that it can irritate a young programmer if you know their idea won't work because it didn't work in the 80's :-).

And some people got into programming as a way to 'make good money' which it is (relative to say working as a stenographer) but their motivations don't always survive into their 50's. So they often change to other non-programming roles.

I expect to program in one form or another until I die. I like the puzzle aspects of it, and the thrill of seeing complex systems come together. So even if I wasn't being paid for writing code I'd still write code in my 'spare' time.

But there are also curmudgeons. These would be folks to learned one way to program and don't want to learn anything new. They have a hard time because they say they are programmers and people looking for programmers ask about current technologies and in response they hear about how crappy these new things are relative to the old ways. Those people are stuck and I feel sorry for them. The may want to program at 50 but they may not be able to find paid employment doing so if they don't know enough about the current state of the world.

Besides, some of the best programmers I know are 50+.

When people ask this question, what they are actually asking is, "Do people want to hire a 50 year old programmer?"

For a lot of the HN set, I bet they would be unsure about hiring someone of such an age; and that's unfortunate.

For many careers, age is seen as wisdom. Lawyers, mathematicians, judges, accountants, politicians, scientists, MBAs, real-estate agents, bankers, journalists, doctors... In all of these fields, all else being equal, you'd probably hire a 50 year old over a 20 year old.

Programmers seem to have more of a shelf life on the open market, along with models, actors, musicians, and laborers. I think many 30 and 40-something programmers sense this and start to wonder if they need a backup plan to get to retirement (which in the US is actually often mid-60s).

It's completely ludicrous to imply that programming is somehow being led astray by young people. Young people have no power. They do what they are told.

Young people don't have to do what their told. We are raised to listen to our parents so, yes, we do what we're told for fear of being punished (grounded, yelled at, etc.). Though that doesn't mean you can't break out of that mold.

The "black box" programming philosophy was not invented by Gen Y. It was invented in the 80s at least and taught by greybeard professors.

This doesn't even make sense. You are being insensitive towards people. The entire point of learning how to program and understanding computer science is to open the black box and peer inside.

The ageism in the field is not something that is coming from young people either. It is coming from employers with the purse strings who recognize that young people are MORE EXPLOITABLE than old people and so they can get more work for their dollars.

Ageism exists in every field, but let's just focus on tech. Do you see many 50+ year old programmers? Ever wonder why? There is a bias for younger people because, yes, they can be molded (or exploited, as you put it), but it is up to that young person to identify any exploitation and resolve it. That's the only way it can change.

Old people lead every field. Young people do what they're told. Old people lead programming too--this guy just isn't one of the influencers. He isn't a 50 year old VC, a 50 year old Comp Sci prof, a 50 year old CEO, a 50 year old BDFL.

If you don't like the way you perceive the game being played, then you are completely free to change the rules of the game. It will mean you need to break out on your own, and take your lumps, but just throwing your hands up and complaining that the "old people" own everything isn't going to change anything. You are simply allowing the problem to persist and then complaining that it exists.

I'm in my 40s, and I've been programming my entire career. I'm trying to get into management so as to extend my career into my 50s and 60s. The realities are that I likely won't be able to compete against kids 1/2 to 1/3 my age in the next 15 years, so I need to use my experience to my advantage.

It's too bad because I would rather just program.

I transitioned into programming as an older worker and it was really easy. It's much easier to be a successful programmer than a successful scientist.

Also I don't think that ageism in tech is a thing. The reason that there are very few older workers is because the number of jobs is increasing exponentially (doubling every 5 years since the 60s). All of those new jobs have to be filled with inexperienced people who are mostly young.