Job Chances for Older Coders? 581
emtboy9 asks: "As the semester winds to a close, exams fall upon us students once again. Today, outside of one of my programming classes, I overheard a conversation between a pair of middle aged women about programming degrees (which they are involved in), and this made me wonder. With the job market in IT being as pathetic as it is, what are the real-world chances of someone who is taking a programming course getting a job. In the places I have worked, all the coders were fairly young. So the question is, what are the chances for an older person, who is just now learning programming to get a job in that field?" Ask Slashdot last touched on this topic back in February of 2001. In the intervening two years, have things gotten worse or better for those who have been in the industry for a long time?
"With the increasing popularity in such places, tech and trade schools and even colleges and universities are spitting out MCSEs, CCNAs, A+, Net+, etc certified techs, as well as people of all ages (one person in my VB class is nearly 60) who are trained to write code.
With that in mind, I guess I thought I would throw that out to the Slashdot crowd to see what kind of experiences they have either as a middle aged person entering the IT workforce for the first time, or as a younger tech, or even a manager, faced with either working with, or hiring someone who is from a completely different generation."
Older coders welcomed where needed (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, a lot of it has to do with the type of company you want/are working for. LNW/LM has lots of old but fairly stable hardware in use. I see lots of COBOL books on shelves, litterally. There's no place for flashy people with their flashy coding - at least not in this insurance building. The management seems to like their coders old, experienced and on the crotchety side.
Note: I'm a young, brash contractor that was brought in for a Win95(!) to Win2k migration project six months ago. So my views are somewhat biased, though not any more than anyone else's I suspect.
I really meant: 'You CAN NOT see older people...' (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Young minds absorb quicker (Score:5, Informative)
Oh please. Anyone who is capable of earning a University degree, old or young, is quite clearly capable of learning... after all, at least when I went through Uni, we had to learn to get the damn degree in the first place! What you describe is just a prejudice... the "old dogs can't learn new tricks" mentality which is, unfortunately, prevalent in our society.
I*M*HO, there is no specific reason to assume older people make poorer techies. In fact, the manager I work for is in his late forties, and he's probably one of the smartest men I've come across. He's constantly learning new things... hell, he seems to have an easier time keeping up with trends than I do!
We hire young people... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Young minds absorb quicker (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't to say that there aren't young people who are bright and gifted (these *want to learn* too.) But I honestly have to say that age has very little to do with learning capacity. Rather, it's the inquisitive mind, one who is willing to learn new things, that do the best.
IMHO, the most important aspect of a programmer or technologist is the ability to solve problems and the capacity to figure things out on their own. In the end, the technology becomes a tool, and nothing more. This requires an open mind, insight and a huge helping of curiosity....
None of which are directly related to age.
To simply think that younger people are automatically terrific at figuring out new technologies is a silly idea, at best.
Chris
No geezers need apply. (Score:4, Informative)
Care to guess how many older workers will get these jobs?
Since this looks like a defense-industry job... (Score:3, Informative)
They probably have a few people in mind (that one or more managers know or are related to) that have these exact qualifications but they can't hire them unless the job offer is made public first.
This is quite common in the defense world. I doubt that they really need 56 people with those exact requirements unless it is for a brand new project.
Re:No geezers need apply. (Score:1, Informative)
It is always easy to *trim* down your resume to show lesser experience than to *create* more experience out of nothing.
For example, eliminate any experience that is not directly specifically related to the advertised job / project requirements. Don't mention which year you graduated.
In general, try to keep in shape physically.
Specifically, for the the interview, put on a wig / dye your graying hair and lather on some ant-wrinkle cream.
Unless you are pushing close to retirement age, you shouldn't have a problem.
Re:Older coders welcomed where needed (Score:3, Informative)
They may seem old, but they follow the requirements that they need to (one currently includes using Win 2k Server as a db for users), and there's always some interesting new problem to tackle. I guess if you're older and looking for software work, the more conservative companies might be the best place for you to look. I feel out of place working with my group, but they're great people, and are patient for people like me who are still in the learning business.
To top it all off, I'm single, and have body piercings
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Informative)
You gave up after 20 years! I've been coding for over 25 and still going strong. I have no plans to stop :-)
My first programs were in FORTRAN, for the moment I'm doing Java, and I'm hoping for Lisp in another 10 years...
Re:Older coders welcomed where needed (Score:5, Informative)
So, I looked for ways to get there without going back to school, and discovered that there was a niche supporting process and device simulation code (written in (ugh) FORTRAN, but it was programming, anyway). I took advantage of an opportunity to branch into circuit simulation, and once I was something of an expert at that, went to a startup as their SPICE expert. I drifted along in that job for many years, went through a couple of mergers, and served as a group manager for a while.
When I was surplused from that job, I worked on simulation and modeling at a small company supporting a contract. When that dried up, I had (at age 48) about three directions I could have gone, but chose to get into signal integrity simulation as a support person (rather than a coder, although there were opportunities to write code also). My background in simulation made it natural to branch into signal integrity. That job, in turn, led to an offer for the "job of a lifetime" at age 51, and I've not felt it necessary to look any further (so far, anyway). At present, I can either work for a vendor of SI software or for one of their customers as a supporter of the software. This is in a field that will only become more in demand as system speeds push past the 1GHz range. I figure that I can be employed as long as I want to be, and age has not mattered much.
In fact, the last few job searches I've done have landed me at companies that appeared to value older employees for their experience; I suspect there are many such companies.
Looking at where I came from, there was no way to predict that I would end up where I am now. Every move was logical at the time, and grew out of prior experience.
While I wasn't a computer science major, and I wasn't a mere programmer or software engineer, I suspect my experience in terms of career evolution is not that unusual.
Maintaining employability in any technical field can be summed up in three rules: Look for jobs that will build on what you already know and let you branch into new areas and learn new things (never stop learning); when you find a job, start looking/thinking about the next job (you are working for yourself primarily and only secondarily for your company); and finally, build a network of friends so you can get them or their bosses to hire you should the need come (networking is job one).
older programmers (Score:1, Informative)
Here's what the unwritten rules seem to be:
Hire employees as a last resort. Better to bring folks in as consultants, see how they work out and then try and convert them to employees if they are good and we want to keep them around.
Get the best experienced coders who will work for the cheapest rates. Its amazing how many senior folks you can get cheap in this market.
Absolutely, positively no recent grads. They have 0 experience and cost too much to train.
Experience - not necessarily IT experience either - in the industry we work in is a plus.
Based on these qualifications, I notice that the average age range of new folks seems to be around 30-34.
At some point, however, too much experience becomes a liabilty and we summarily reject those types of resumes. Of course, in the mainframe department, these seem to be the hottest resumes. In the web department, you need to have had "rode the bubble" plus had some significant non-web experience before then.
The MS Certs are useless. We have a ton of folks already with this skill set. Unix/Java programmers are in high demand. Like alot of big companies, we are moving away from MS and into linux or unix based app development.
The point? Well, I guess its this - there is no overt age discrimination, but rather "experience discrimination". There is definetly an age range that gets the jobs. But surprise - its usually the under 30's and the over 45's that are out of luck.
Re:Solutions to the tech sector problem (Score:2, Informative)
I never liked unions... not because of their association with manual labor but because of their methods! Strikes, slow-downs, this is what I did in Kindergarten and maybe elementary school. In Europe just turn on the TV and you will have a negative attitude towards unions too.
Personal Experience of a 48-year-old (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't count on it (Score:3, Informative)
Not a bad goal. Lisp has certainly weathered well over the years. It has fallen somewhat out of favor in the past decade. I attribute that to two things. First, it has suffered by association with AI. Second, Lisp is not a language one grasps quickly. The power is contained in idioms and composition of features one with another. That doesn't invite the newbie.
When you can look at Paul Graham's book On Lisp [paulgraham.com] and Andrei Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design [moderncppdesign.com] and understand the similarities, you are ready to code in any language.
Re:30 is young! (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I always laugh when these kids with a couple of years experience in IT call themselves "gurus". In any other profession, 5 years experience is barely enough to be allowed to work unsupervised!
MOVE TO DC! (Score:3, Informative)
Older coders who are more likely to get a security clearance are needed, especially if you have any old military or government experience.
The trick is finding the position that gets you your first security clearance. Take less money for it. Once you have one, you will have little problem holding a job in the DC area.
Besides government, there are also many non-profits and lobbying groups in the area. National Geographic is looking for an experienced webmaster, for instance.
While AOL and Wolrdcom/MCI/UUWho shed some people, it is looking like many of them are ending up in other places. Plus MCI is moving their main operations to Northern Virginia.
Jobs might not be as cool in the DC area as they were three years ago, but the good news is that there are jobs at all, and that there are cheap places to live in DC. South of DC in Maryland, $250k buys you a spacious McMansion. Cheap rents in Oxon Hill and SouthEast DC. Just don't live in MD north of DC or in Northern VA, it is expensive there.
No, it is not nirvana, but there are jobs here.