I'm just worried about age discrimination. I'm 35. Do I have 15 years to make bank, after which they take me out back and shoot me? How common are developers over 50 at these companies?
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There certainly is age discrimination out there.
One of the reasons we see fewer older developers is that software development wasn't a major career in the 80's and even early 90's. Nothing like it is today in terms of numbers of people. So, there just weren't as many people doing it. Now that they are older the number of younger people dwarf them, in part, because the number of jobs has gone up.
Older developers are there. I know a number of them.
There are also company differences. Some companies don't like to hire older developers. Some of these companies want people to work around the clock and older developers tend to have families and hobbies. It's harder to have an influence on them to work a major number of hours.
Then there are older developers who do not want to change. I know some of these. As technology changes a breakneck speeds they don't want to move on from what they did to something new. This can cause issues and give the age group a bad name.
I find the most successful older developers are those who use their experience to do a good job and what needs to be done while adapting as things change.
My company is LOADED with older devs. Our average dev age is probably close to 50. There is in fact a huge gap, only a handful of us under 30. At 27 I might still be the youngest developer in my 50 developer department.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is not web, app, or game development. What does your company do?
We're in healthcare.
We have web,app, and even game dev. Personally I work in Data Engineering/Machine Learning/Applied Stats space with some app dev work as well. I'm learning to wear a lot of hats as we segment into small groups and it effectively feels like a bunch of different startups in a "closed" economy of the company.
Sounds like a fascinating place to work. I feel the general rarity of gray beards in the industry denies me a different perspective and experience that I could learn from.
Is there any difference in productivity to a more stereotype younger workforce?
I'm not good with people, so I doubt I'll ever be in a position to do so, but the ideal team composition to me needs a mixture of naive geniuses and people who've been around the block enough to know when to say KISS.
I would say we're a very stable group. It's rare anyone is going to put in more than 45 hours a week, but at the same time stakeholders have extreme confidence that their projects will be done correctly. We're more of a steady churn than a burn out in a flash--which is the feeling I get from younger startup workers.
How does age discrimination manifest? I'm less concerned with being passed over for promotions than just having a job. Is it mainly that older guys are first on the chopping block for layoffs? How much does one have to "watch their back" and perhaps overachieve to stay safe?
I feel like it really depends what you're doing - not necessarily what job title, but philosophically too.
If you can kind of transcend past manager to "architect" then it seems to be much more "cool" to have older staff. If you're doing something highly cyclical (or prone to fads) like designing websites it would have to be an uphill struggle. Experience is hard to measure and value, in some areas more than others.
Obviously the company matters a lot too, e.g. maybe avoid IBM... I suppose you'd have to spot whether the management are likely to believe that youth guarantees innovation (to quote James Bond of all people).
Not all companies have age discrimination not every developer job is in SV or even a “tech company”.
Also why don’t you move to management? I’m soon to be 35 and I’m taking a director role now primarily because it’s somewhat the natural progression path.
A lot of the experience you gain isn’t purely tech focused and it’s a shame to let that experience go to waste.
I like coding, I don't like management. I'm not good with people. Other hobbies of mine are cooking, woodworking, rock climbing. I like getting my hands dirty. I value good management and I'm pretty sure I'd be horrible at it, in addition to just not liking it.
I remember interviewing someone around 50 who interviewed well, we hired, and did good work. I think part of why he interviewed well was he knew we'd ask whiteboard coding questions, so he studied for them.
Some amount of what you hear about age discrimination is older candidates are less familiar with CS fundamentals because you don't use them all that often on the job, whereas fresh-out-of-school candidates still remember them.
This isn't to say the typical software engineering interview is effective or ineffective, just that preparing for what you know you'll be tested on helps a lot.
Not everyone has a dream of going into management.
Yeah, Boeing (can't believe I'm citing them positively) had two tracks for engineers: management and technical fellow, with the latter basically being a researcher. Tech changes much more quickly than aerospace (which hasn't fundamentally changed since the '30s) and so I don't how a "tech researcher" would make sense, unless you're in a rarefied elite like Yann.