Thats what this whole article is about. Older people usually have less ability to take a higher risk, due to family concerns, or other reasons. It is classic supply and demand. Younger programmers are more sought after, therefore demand higher pay.
I"m not sure that the common idea is that younger programmers are more skilled, but rather that they are more in demand. Could be for a variety of reasons, for example:
- cheaper
- less jaded
- easier to "manage"
- more willing to do the boring work that the older devs don't want to do
Most older programmers want to be paid more because they are old. Not because they bring added value. That's the issue. I'm over 40. I have no issues getting the compensation I think I am worth. I also am not embarrassed to be paid the same amount as people ten years younger than me. I'm not adding more value than them on a productivity basis ... so I should not get paid more.
Truly excellent programmers in my age group are absurdly well paid as consultants. But it takes courage and extreme productivity to live like that. Most people my age don't have the gumption to do that.
- It's easier to convince young people to accept lower salaries and work long hours (e.g., if they have no family to support or spend time with).
- It's more expensive to buy health insurance for an older pool of employees.
- Young people are probably less likely to be dissatisfied with cheap work accommodations like open-plan offices.
On the other hand, there are increased efficiencies associated with older employees:
- People earlier in their career might have significantly higher job-turnover rates.
- Older employees have more work experience, and can prevent lots of problems before they happen.
- Older employees have had the time to become better at what they do. I don't think the best developers reach their peak skills after only working for 5 years.[1] Learning from your mistakes takes time.
(I'm a developer in my 50s, and I work with lots of older developers who are good at what they do.)
If your talented there is huge demand for 60+ year old programmers. The issue is expected salary increases with age, and if your skill's don't keep up it becomes harder to find a job.
PS: My father was a 63 year old programmer the day he died, and believe me he was well paid and in high demand.
I think one of the interesting angles here is “the rate [these programmers] expect [the company] to pay”.
Experience has value, but it surely tapers off. If someone who is 50 and has 30 years of experience is no better than someone who is 40 with 20 or 35 with 15, why would the 40 or 50 year old expect to make more? (I think they often do, but I don’t see the basis for it, speaking as someone on the right end of that age spectrum: you’re hiring me for what I can do, not how many candles were on my last cake.)
I'd imagine that even if there's a opportunity there, it's still hard to separate great older devs from mediocre older devs, and older people have higher salary expectations.
I think a lot of the age-ism has more to do with cost than skill. Older developers ask for more pay, negotiate more, and are less willing to put in uncompensated overtime.
The way to get past this is to make sure you develop skills that are exotic and high-end and hard to find so you can't easily be replaced by a cheaper college grad.
While I also consider myself lucky, not everyone works as a software engineer earning high salaries. Being older also (usually) means more responsibilities and less tolerance for risk.
So this is a nuanced question and requires a detailed response. But the gist is that older folks don't necessarily cost more. I've seen many older folks continue to work as developers for most of their lives (albeit this is outside Silicon Valley). But for many older developers who continue on the technical track, they have accumulated a lot of experience building software and they do bring a lot to the table, in terms of design, or prescient thinking, or knowing the internals of certain stacks very very well. That kind of knowledge is certainly useful for firms that operate on scale, have systems that cannot tolerate downtime, and so on.
There tends to be a lot more money in management, consulting, and other areas that don't require daily coding. I've heard many non-technical people say that if you're still coding after ~35, you must be lacking important people skills. I don't agree with that kind of generalization, but it seems to be a common viewpoint.
The major problem for older programmers is that people believe that the ability to learn decreases with age. I think I've seen some research to back it up, but it was more about willingness to learn, as well as having to let go of long-held ideas.
For example, few grandparents will figure out how to use a new smartphone as quickly as their grandchildren will. It may just be because the form factor is new, and they have to forget a lot of their understanding of how such devices work. It may also be that they no longer want to invest the time learning something that won't pay them back before they die. (That may sound harsh, but my dad, who is 72, often gives this reason for refusing to learn how to use a smartphone. In his mind, things change too rapidly and the time would be wasted.)
Another problem is that older programmers have higher salary requirements. My company interviewed (and eventually hired) a 60-year-old iOS developer, and he asked us for double what the developers in their 30s were asking for.
(It's also a lot more expensive to pay for health benefits for an older person, but it's not that much compared to the salary issue.)
I hope that a solution could be provided by the anonymity of the internet. Perhaps older programmers could truncate their resumes and remove the years they earned their degrees, and then they could find contract work. I personally have had many contracts where the client had no idea how old I am. Toptal might be a good option.
This is a great point and one I have mentioned to friends. We are only now getting to the point where there are a lot of older (>35) programmers. I'm sure there is some ageism/easier to exploit younger workers happening, but on whole given the current demand I don't think it really saves companies much money.
For an anecdotal data point, where I work now I'm one of the younger guys at 37.
The problem with Old Programmers, is not their work. Thats solid. Its the fact that they have mortgages, pensions, health issues, etc. This costs employers money. And employers HATE giving money because they feel like since you are getting a meager salary they are already doing you a giant favor.
Its a management cultural issue, not an older programmer issue really.
I think it's more that the priorities of older programmers are different. If you're in your 20's, you are less likely to have kids or other things that take you from work. If you're older, you have a family and other drains on your time.
Based on the findings I think it is premature to say this is ageism.
There are multiple other factors going on here:
1) As senior developers become more skilled there is a diminishing return in terms of compensation. This happens regardless of age. A developer with 40 years of experience is not really worth that much more than a developer with 30 years of experience.
2) As developers get nearer towards retirement there is less incentive for them to stay at the top of their field.
3) As developers get older they tend to want to find a place they enjoy working at rather than playing the salary game every 2 years.
I don't think this is due to a perception of older developers not being as good as younger developers. I think most people would agree that a more experienced dev would have better skills and be more efficient.
I believe it all comes down to pay. The experienced developer commands a higher salary than a 20 year old, rightfully so. But employers fail to see the added value they bring, just as they have trouble identifying the 10x programmers out there.
IME it's not pure 'ageism', but salary and workplace dynamics. Having had the privilege of working with many older devs, who played a big role in shaping my career...
After the first 2 decades your worth as an individual contributor (or at most, team lead) stagnates. You're probably at the top of the pay grade already, and the older you get the more you'll have to work with more junior people, as 'equals' despite having substantially more experience. It's very hard to give you any sort of career progression. You may be a lot more productive, but your 'multiplier effect' is small compared to a manager, or someone who deals with a lot more stakeholder complexity.
It's even more pronounced in current times where a 25 year old makes 100K (a lot in the UK). They're very unlikely to double their salary over the next 10 years in similar positions. Whereas most people start at 25K.. work their way up to 100K... exec level etc is 200K.
Successful 'pure' programmers who get jobs usually have an infra flavour of the month skillset, or make it clear that they're happy to get paid the same as someone with say 10 years of experience.
Most of them though go into strategy or become contractors.
It doesn’t matter how good you are, a team of 10 well-managed programmers will always out code you. You can hve higher output per hour, if you do the well-managed part.
Or you become a teacher. Make 10 programmers 11% better and you’ve contributed more to the company’s bottom line than you ever could on your own.
Or a consultant. In that one highly specialized area where you are king ... well a team of 10 can’t touch you because your pattern matching solves the problem right away.
Ultimately the older you are the more you understand that hey, maybe if your work is contributing millions to the bottom line, maybe you should be compensated proportionally and that $150k is a joke?
This understanding is a problem for new founders. First of all, they’d like to pay you less moneys and give you kool-aid instead. Team spirit and all that. Second of all, you are likely waaaay overqualified for what they actually need. Makes you hard to keep around and engineering churn is one of the toughest things to work around on a product team. Institutional knowledge is king.
So ageism comes about. Because experienced people are both expensive and unnecessary.
You're right. My guess is that on average a 40yo needs 2x the pay and brings 1.5x the value. So it's maybe not so drastic and there are benefits of hiring older developers (stay around longer, more reliable, etc).
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